


I'll Break Things If You Let Me

by protect_the_fishboy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Asthmatic Dean Winchester, Blood and Gore, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Dorks, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Roommates, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Everyone Is Gay, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jessica is Jewish and y'all can't stop me, M/M, Minor Character Death, Past Cassie Robinson/Dean Winchester, Trans Dean Winchester, Vampire Castiel, Vampire Gabriel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-02-22 10:26:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13164990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protect_the_fishboy/pseuds/protect_the_fishboy
Summary: Dean is just trying to get through college, keep his grades up and avoid mentioning his name, lest he garner sympathy about his father, the late John Winchester, former professor of theology. He's pre-med and he volunteers at the hospital and that's sort of it, but he might as well join the gymnastics team, with all the cartwheels he has to do around Sam's well-meaning concern and his harping about how they need a third roommate. (He's not gonna join the gymnastic team.)When coincidences align, it is Castiel Milton who becomes Sam and Dean's third roommate, the mysterious, sweatered candy striper that has been avoiding Dean for months. The mysterious, sweatered, and unfairly attractive candy striper. It quickly becomes clear that there is something...off about Castiel. Something different. He keeps impossible hours, shuttles people in and out at the crack of dawn, and after what Dean thought was opening up to him, he's gone back to ignoring Dean's existence entirely.Before Dean knows it, he is catapulted into an impossible world, a world made up of vampires, centuries-old entities, a massive conspiracy, civil unrest, and the scariest thing yet: emotional intimacy.He just wanted to fucking graduate.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm doing this, i guess.  
> no regular update schedule, but i do have the whole story plotted, so hopefully they won't take too long.  
> unbeta'd. it's better than it sounds, i swear.

The thing about hospitals is that they’re all the same.  

Dean understands why people hate them—really, he does—but sitting here on the exam table, the paper crinkling beneath him, a blood pressure cuff tightening around his bicep, he can’t help but feel...safe. Understood.  

He’s biased, he guesses. He grew up in one, doodling on prescription pads with crayons, running his favorite toy car along the floor (weaving around the nurse’s practical clogs on his hands and knees,  _look, Mom, look at how fast I am!),_ Mary bouncing him on her lap as she updated charts on her computer even though he was far too old for that, stray blonde hair that escaped from her tight bun tickling his cheek. Every once in a while, she’d turn to him with a wide, warm smile.  

The whirring of blood pressure machines were his lullaby. The smell of antiseptic was the closest he got to the smell of home, and was in fact the very smell that followed him home from work with Mary, permeated the whole house along with her tired sighs and her whispered arguments with John when she thought Dean was sleeping.  

So, yeah. Dean likes hospitals. Don’t overanalyze it.  

The nurse—Tessa, today—gives him a small, tired smile, the expression of someone who genuinely cares but is too busy to do much about it. “Dr. Visyak says everything looks good, Dean. Just make sure to keep an eye on your lungs. Don’t bind for too long and keep doing your injections around the same time each week, okay? You know where to find us if you need something.”  

“Thanks, Tessa,” Dean says, but she’s already whisking out the door. Dean wonders how many patients she has. Tessa oversees the hospital volunteer program, and even though Dean's known her for years, he swears her face is as young and beautiful as it was when he was a child. She’s funny and whip-smart and strong and she likes Dean best, he thinks, but lately she’s looked so  _tired_. 

He wonders if she’s one of the nurses who really cares about all of her patients. He wonders if that kind of thing is sustainable.   

He thinks she does, though.  

He’s walking down the corridor, idly rubbing at the bandage across his forearm—and yeah, okay, if he has to name one part of the hospital experience that he could do without, it’s the blood draws—and he’s so fixated on reaching under the bandage to rub at the stinging skin there that he almost runs directly into Sweater Guy, who reaches out preemptively to steady Dean by the shoulders. 

“Shit, sorry,” Dean mutters reflexively, then looks up to see that it’s him and, well, fuck.  

Dean’s been volunteering at the hospital for six months or so, now, answering call buttons for the nurses and giving directions to confused family members and just grunt work, really, something—nay,  _anything—_ for him to put on his resume, and at every single shift he’s volunteered for, he’s seen Sweater Guy.  

He’s Dean’s height but twice as skinny, collarbones jutting out underneath his sweaters (his  _endless_ sweaters, usually layered over collared shirts and rolled up to the elbows, no matter how swelteringly hot it gets outside). The sweaters bother Dean more than they should, because they all look expensive, and yeah, sue him, he’s a little bitter, because he buys one new pair of shoes a year and calls it  _splurging_. He’s a candy striper, Dean thinks. He wears a pair of yellow-tinted glasses that Dean cannot for the life of him make sense of, constantly slipping down his nose. He has what Jo insists is  _sex hair_ , expression perpetually annoyed, like he always has something better to doing.  

And he avoids the  _fuck_ out of Dean.  

“It’s not on  _purpose_ ,” Jo said one day a few months ago, leaning conspiratorially  over their little table in the hospital cafeteria, mouth full of mediocre tuna fish sandwich, because Jo is a godless heathen who enjoys tuna fish sandwiches. “He’s just...busy, you know? He doesn’t avoid you more than he avoids anyone else.”   

“Except he  _does,”_ Dean muttered, toying with the bottlecap from his soda. More than once he’d made eye contact with him in the hall, and then watched him completely switch directions, head ducked down low over his shoulders.  

Not long after that, Jo transferred from UNC to a community college closer to home—to study  _mortuary science,_ because Jo is, in addition to being a godless heathen, a chiefly ridiculous person—and now Dean doesn’t have anyone to complain to about this.  

It shouldn’t bother him, except...Dean is likeable. He  _is._ He charms nurses as though that’s what he’s getting volunteer credit for. Babies smile at him on the street. He’s  _likeable._  

So what the  _fuck_ , you know?  

“I apologize,” Sweater Guy says now, and Dean is hyper-aware of his chapped lips, of his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down nervously in his throat. He makes himself look away.  

“ _You_  apologize? I’m the one who didn’t see you, dude,” Dean says, and God  _damn_ does that yellow sweater he’s wearing look nice on him. It shouldn’t. Yellow is categorically the worst color. Dean’s  _pissed._  

Sweater Guy actually cracks a smile. “Yes, well. I’m glad we avoided a collision.”  

And just like that, he’s walking off, and Dean doesn’t know what he’s supposed to make of it, if it means anything at all, but surely first contact after six months of silence means  _something._  

“Hey,” he calls out before he can think better of it. “What’s your name?”  

Sweater Guy stops and blinks, surprised. “Oh. My name is Castiel Milton.” He swallows. “What’s yours?”  

“Dean.”  

“It’s nice to meet you, Dean,” Castiel says softly, and Dean watches him walk away until he disappears around the corner.  

* 

“I figured out his name!” Dean says triumphantly, feeling very pleased with himself. His pockets are bulging with cafeteria cookies, and he drags his usual chair up beside Pamela’s bed.  

“Good morning to you, too, Winchester. Took you long enough. I was quite literally  _dying_ for you to get here,” Pam says, her lips quirking up into a grin.  

Dean says, “Don’t be dramatic,” and empties his pockets onto her lap.  

Pamela Barnes has been a patient for as long as Dean has been volunteering here. Dean doesn’t usually interact closely with the patients—he knows himself, knows what he can handle, and he volunteers in the cancer wing, so you do the math on that one. It’s just that Pam is strong, and she is funny, and the first time Dean came into her room to bring her a cup of water he stared maybe more than he should have at her milky, unseeing irises before murmuring to Jo just outside the door,  _what is it? Eye cancer?_  And Pam quipped, “I’m blind, not deaf,” and Dean flushed scarlet.  

“Chocolate chip?” Pam asks, inclining her head slightly, her dangling earrings swaying with the motion. Her head is shaved again in preparation for another round of chemo (and fuck if that doesn’t make Dean’s chest ache with the  _unfairness_  of it all), but like always, she’s turned it into a  _look_ , lips painted a dark red that matches her sunglasses. She has a collection of them, the sunglasses— _I_ _’m not ashamed_ , she told Dean once.  _I know my eyes are probably freaky to look at, but I don’t particularly care. It’s just that being blind doesn’t have many perks, but getting to wear sunglasses inside is one of them._  

“Yeah, ‘course. Do I look like a fucking animal?” Dean helps himself to one of the cookies, tearing open its plastic wrapper and taking a bite with relish.  

“I wouldn’t know,” Pam quips, and Dean almost chokes on his cookie. “I digress.  _Whose_  name?”  

“Sweater Guy,” Dean says, and Pam’s eyebrows shoot up over her sunglasses. “His name is Castiel Milton, apparently.”  

“You  _talked_ to him?” Pam asks, incredulous, because yeah, she’s been following this saga since Jo was here, when they’d sit on the edge of Pam’s bed, lunch trays balanced on their knees, so that Pam could fill them in on the hospital gossip. “And he talked  _back_? Wow, what a concept. It’s almost like I’ve been right all along.” She sounds awfully smug, which is fair. She’s been haranguing Dean to  _just ask him what his deal is for God’s sake_ for months now.  

“In my defense,” Dean says, swallowing hard, “He talked to me first, and it was only because I almost ran into him.”  

“Charming.”  

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean says, reaching for another cookie. The only good part about the cancer wing (besides Pam) is the fact that there are a metric fuckton of cookies in a bin behind the nurse’s station, the most puzzling aspect of the hospital’s cancer support program. They are free for cancer patients upon request, which Dean thinks is kind of fucked up— _s_ _orry you’re going through chemo, have a_ _cookie!--_ but it always makes Pam smile when he brings her some, so maybe they’re doing their job after all.  

“So, is that it? Did you gaze longingly into his eyes? Did  _he_ gaze longingly into  _yours?”_  

Dean flushes. “Well it wasn’t his  _eyes_ I was staring at.”  

“Dean!” Pam exclaims, pressing a hand to her chest in mock horror.  

“We’ve discussed this,” Dean points out, because they have. Sweater Guy-- _Castiel_ _,_ Dean corrects himself, the name halting and strange in his mind—is  _hot,_ and Dean is and always has been acutely aware of that hotness, reinforced by how he's had to describe his face in detail, multiple times, to a fawning Pam. “He’s attractive. It doesn’t mean anything.”  

“Of course not.” Pam’s poker face is damn near immaculate, but then, Dean already knows what she thinks.  _No one fixates this much when they_ don’t _have a crush_ , she loves to point out, but come on, Pam, what basis does he have for that? He’s attractive and only wears sweaters and avoids Dean like the plague ( _used_  to avoid Dean, his brain unhelpfully supplies). Of course Dean is a little obsessed. That makes sense. It’s  _sensible._  

Dean is about to say as much out loud when Pam doubles over and begins coughing so hard that she retches, and shit, just motherfucking  _shit,_ okay? Dean shoots out of his chair and presses the button to adjust Pam’s bed so that she’s sitting up better, places a precautionary kidney dish on her lap and palms her back, hard. This happens sometimes.  

Here is the thing about Pam: she is strong, and she is funny, and she is dying.  

She explained it to him a few months into their friendship.  _Neurofibromatosis type 2, which is about as fun as it sounds,_ she said, with the practiced joviality of someone who has been using humor to cope for a quite some time—Dean knows that joviality. He’s used it himself.  _It’s usually genetic, but sometimes it’s not. And usually the tumors aren’t cancerous, but sometimes they are._ She didn’t elaborate, so Dean didn’t ask her to, but he did some Googling when he got home. NF2 isn’t usually terminal; it causes tumors to grow within the nerves, often benign. Pam’s blindness is the result of cataracts that NF2 causes to develop early, and the fact that some of her tumors turned cancerous is extremely rare. She’s won a shitty, shitty lottery, and Dean wants to scream to anyone who will listen how unfair that is.  

But Pam, with her coy smiles and sunglasses and lipstick, is having none of that, even when she’s coughing up a lung. “If you wanted to touch me, all you had to do was ask,” she manages to wheeze out between bouts of coughing, now, and Dean has to physically restrain himself from rolling his eyes, even though she can't see it anyway,  _ha_ _ha_.  

“I’m okay,” she says after a minute or so without coughing, absently wiping away the tears of exertion trailing down her cheeks. Dean ducks outside her room for a second where his cart is sitting, snags one of the Dixie cups of water from it to hand to Pam.  

“You’re okay,” he echoes, trying to keep the sadness out of his voice, because if Pam isn’t sad about this, he definitely isn’t allowed to be.  

“Go on, okay? I’m good here. I’ve got enough cookies to last me a few years,” she says, which is code for  _I’m tired and I want to be alone._  

“Your house, your rules,” Dean says, raising his hands in mock-defeat and walking out into the hall, which is code for  _I’m sorry you’re hurting._   

Dean doesn’t usually interact closely with the patients. But when he does, he really does. Fucking Pamela Barnes, you know?  

  

Dean’s shift passes without much further ado. He swings by the pharmacy before he leaves for refills on his inhaler and his testosterone injections, and then he’s out the door and into the chilly air of the parking lot, and well, what do you fucking know.  

“Castiel,” Dean says when he reaches his car.  

“Oh. Hello, Dean,” Castiel says sheepishly. He’s standing at the front of a car—not just  _a_  car,  _the_  car—its hood propped open in a universal sign of defeat. “I seem to...be having some car trouble.”  

“No fucking way,” Dean breathes out, because some things are too strange to be coincidences.  

“I’m...I’m sorry?”  

Dean shakes himself. “No, you’re good, sorry. It’s just that, uh. This is  _your_  car?”  

It’s a Mercedes AMG, and it’s been parked next to Dean’s car every day for a couple months now. Dean’s awe hasn’t dulled with time. He figured it belonged to some paranoid doctor, rich and extravagant and scared enough of car crashes to buy a luxury armored SUV. The fact that it belongs to Castiel isn’t strange all on its own—because sure, whatever, Castiel is well-off, that’s a thing that happens to people—but the odds of the day he realizes it belongs to Castiel being the same day he learns Castiel’s name after months of wondering and silence?  

Well.  

“Yes. It’s practically new,” Castiel says sadly, “but I’m hopeless with cars. It’s probably something stupid.”  

And then, because Dean is a masochist, he finds himself saying “Well, I know a thing or two about cars,” and yeah, okay, this is happening, apparently.  

“You do?” Castiel’s expression is nothing short of hopeful. “Dean, I would be incredibly grateful.”  

“Of course,” Dean says, already moving toward the car, because who is he to say no to beautiful boy in a yellow sweater, to a beautiful car with its hood propped open? “It’s no trouble. Keys?”  

“In the ignition.”  

Dean forces himself to focus on the task at hand, even though sitting in the driver’s seat makes him feel downright  _giddy_. He tells himself it’s the car’s immaculate leather interiors, the sheer novelty of sitting in a ridiculous, extravagant vehicle, and not the boy standing in front of the hood with his hands folded across his chest in defeat. He takes a breath.  

 _Although,_ he thinks as he twists the key in the ignition, surely this is an acceptable thing to be intrigued by. Why is unassuming Castiel, who looks no older than Dean, driving an armored SUV—and not just  _any_  armored SUV, but one that can sustain machine guns and hand grenades?  

He guesses people could say the same about him and his car, because the upkeep of classic cars is a bit of a bitch, but the Impala isn't  _machine gun proof,_ and it certainly isn't  _new._ She's in mint condition, of course, but she was passed down to him, not bought fresh off the lot. She's not a symptom of extravagance the way this absolute mammoth must be. So. Not the same, actually.  

When he tries to crank up the car, it makes a horrible grinding sound that he knows well, the needles on dashboard instruments shuddering. Dean takes great pains to compose his amused grin into something more sympathetic.  

“Good news and bad news,” he says, slamming the car door behind him reflexively before cringing. This isn’t the Impala, with its squeaky doors and stubborn latches, and that door alone probably cost more than Dean’s college tuition. “The good news is it’s nothing serious. You’ve just got a dead battery.”  

Castiel slumps a little with what Dean assumes is relief. “That seems manageable.”  

“The bad news, though,” Dean says. “Do you have jumper cables?”  

“No,” Castiel replies, ducking his head like he’s embarrassed.  

“See, that’s what I was worried about.” Dean gestures to his own car. “I don’t have mine either. I loaned them to my brother over the weekend because he went to the mountains to, like,  _commune with nature_ or whatever and his car  _sucks._ ”  

Castiel, despite looking rather frazzled by this entire ordeal, quirks a very small smile. “Well, I’m sure it’s no…” He gestures to Dean’s car helplessly. “I’m sure it’s no...whatever your car is. I don’t know. I like it, though.”  

“A ‘67 Chevy Impala,” Dean says proudly, as though his heart didn’t just skip a few beats. He’s a simple man: if you’re a beautiful boy in a yellow sweater with great taste in cars, well. Like Dean told Pam. He’s not exactly looking Cas in the  _eyes_ anymore _,_ you know? “And you’re right. It’s a 1996 Ford Fiesta and it’s a  _fucking nightmare_. As though driving a Ford isn’t insulting enough, he has to have the one that sounds like a diesel engine,” and yeah, okay, stop talking, Dean, Castiel’s eyes have glazed over. “Anyway, he’s back, now, so I can go grab them and come back to give you a jump. Our place is literally right around the corner.”  

“I wouldn’t want to impose,” Castiel hedges, a little desperately. Dean sees him battling internally between the need to be polite and the need to get his car running again.  

“You’re not imposing,” Dean says, “because I offered. Seriously. Apologizing to me when  _I_  ran into  _you_! Thinking you’re an imposition after  _I_  offered  _you_  something! You’re too nice for your own good, Cas.” The nickname slips out without Dean’s consent, and he feels the tips of his ears warm.  

Cas looks at him, tilting his head curiously. “I have an anxiety disorder,” he says after a moment, very plainly, and Dean feels like the biggest asshole in the world. He feels like an even bigger asshole because his knee-jerk reaction is to laugh, because what a  _mood,_ really.  

To his abject horror, the laughter actually bubbles out, warm and genuine and  _fuck_ , he needed it, but he can also feel himself blushing crimson, because Jesus Christ, Dean, this is not the kind of reaction you should be having to this information. “I’m sorry,” he manages after a too-long moment. “I’m so sorry, oh my  _God_ , I promise I’m not laughing at you. It’s just...fuck, we’re not allowed to be that blunt, you know?”  

Castiel inclines his head again, an unspoken question, and yeah, okay, you made this bed, Dean, now lie in it.  

“I just mean, like...okay. Example. I’m chronically ill, right? I have asthma, and my little brother does, too, so thanks for that, genetics, but anyway the point is that I tell people I’m sick and they’re like,  _get well soon!_ They don’t understand that I don’t... _want_  that. They don’t get that I’m sick, and that it’s  _okay_! That’s  _fine_! If you’re sick, you either have to be dying, or you have to be  _overcoming_  it or some shit. I just…I wish I could introduce myself like  _hi, I’m Dean, I have depression and my lungs don’t work very well._ But I can’t, because that’s weird, that makes healthy people feel awkward, and our whole lives are about making healthy people feel better about  _our_  fucking lives.” He takes a breath, a little more painfully than he would prefer because it's goddamn cold out. “I just mean...I don’t know. It’s refreshing.”  

Well, okay. Emotional intensity with Sweater Guy is not what Dean banked on happening today, but Sweater Guy is  _Castiel_ _Milton_ , and now that he’s looking at him up close, he kind of feels like he’s demystifying him or...or something. The expensive sweater, he sees, is fraying at the sleeve from being picked at nervously. That annoyed expression, the one Dean always interpreted as aloof, is the face Cas makes when his glasses start slipping down his nose. His  _sex hair_ is mussed from running his hands tiredly through it, a habit he probably picked up as a stress reaction.  

Sweater Guy, as it happens, is just a  _guy._  

Anyway, Dean’s shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot, feeling the full force of the straight-up  _monologue_ he’s just delivered, but then Cas is saying “That’s  _exactly_  it” in this relieved goddamn voice, so maybe things are okay after all.  “What  _is_ that? Why do they make it so weird? It’s not like it’s  _contagious_.”  

“Right? I don’t know. I’m just kind of exhausted of healthy people.” He inclines his head, toward his car, moving to the driver’s side because, again, it’s cold as shit and his lungs ache and he really should get Cas that jump. “I’ll go grab those cables.”  

“Oh, yeah,” Cas says, like he’s forgotten what the whole point of this was (and doesn’t that just make something warm pool in Dean’s chest, God, he’s so screwed), and casts a withering glance toward the hospital doors. Dean looks at him for a second, shivering underneath his layers in front of his out-of-commission car, and before he can think about it any further than that he’s saying “You can ride with me there and back, if you want? It’s awfully cold out.”  

Cas positively  _beams_. “I would like that very much, Dean.”  

Okay then.  

* 

Sam is doing honest-to-God yoga in the middle of the living room when Dean gets home, and isn’t that just their whole relationship summarized. He throws Cas a put-upon glance over his shoulder, and Cas bites his lip to keep from laughing. Has Dean mentioned that Cas is  _attractive_? God fucking damn it.  

“ _Namaste_ , bitch,” he says in lieu of a hello, and Sam startles, staggering forward out of the tree pose.  

“Don’t say that,” Castiel and Sam say in unison, and well, that’s it, Dean wants to die.  

“What, namaste? Isn’t that a yoga thing?”   

“You’re a white atheist, dude,” Sam says, rolling his neck and stretching his right arm across his chest. “Namaste is a spiritual thing. Comes from Hinduism. Not ours to throw around.”  

“It relates to the chakras,” Cas supplies, and that’s all it takes for Sam and Cas to launch into a full discussion about cultural appropriation and Hinduism, Sam still stretching in the center of the living room and Cas standing by the door. Dean takes this opportunity to take off his jacket and grab a soda from the fridge. He has a feeling he’s gonna be here for a while.  

“So how do you know Dean, again?” Sam is saying as he re-enters the living room. Castiel has migrated to the couch, at least, albeit with his back ramrod straight.  

“He volunteers at the hospital with me,” Dean says before Cas can say anything, and when Sam glances over at him, Dean mouths  _Sweater Guy_ over Cas’s head. Sam’s eyes bulge, so Dean forges ahead before he can say something to embarrass him. “His battery died, so I came here for the jumper cables.”  

“Keys are on the kitchen table,” Sam says, and bends down to touch his toes.  

Dean doesn’t hate his brother, he reminds himself as he goes into the kitchen to grab the keys, wrinkles his nose at the empty tumbler cup tinged green with the remains of what was probably one of Sam’s health shakes. He  _doesn’t_ , even though Sam turned out frustratingly functional. He’s pre-law. He loves mornings. He drinks health shakes and does yoga and stresses out over A minuses (that he always brings up to As).  

Dean doesn’t hate his brother, but they don’t have too terribly much in common.  

“Did you put up the fliers?” Sam calls, and God, not this again, but before he can say as much Sam is following it up with “We’re really gonna struggle this month if we don’t get it figured out soon,” and what is Dean supposed to say to that? It's true.  

“I know,” Dean mutters weakly, twirling the keys around his finger. He sits on the couch next to Cas, careful to leave a socially acceptable distance between them. “I know, Sammy. But...no, I didn’t.”  

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam chastises, and Dean thinks he would prefer anger to the disappointment. “Did you talk to anyone, at least? It’ll be easier if it’s someone we know for, like, negotiating rent and stuff.”  

“Um,” Dean says eloquently, but then Cas is saying, “Actually, he talked to me,” and alright then, that took a turn.  

“Oh,” Sam says, skeptical, but his face has brightened nonetheless. “Really?”  

“That’s part of why I brought him with me to grab the cables,” Dean says, because he’s rolling with this, apparently. “To show him the room.”  

“I wanted to see it for myself,” Castiel says sagely.  

“Uh, yeah,” Dean says lamely.  

Sam is giving him this proud goddamn grin, and Dean is having trouble looking at it, because seriously, it shouldn't  _be_ like this. Sam has left this whole roommate search up to him, which is a nice gesture—Sam could live with anyone, with his natural inclination toward small talk and his health shakes and his goddamn optimism, but Dean, with his bound chest and testosterone injections, has a lot more to lose here. The thing is, Dean, for all his charm and his mock-flirting and his wolfish grins, has a hard time with people, so him bringing home a coworker home (or whatever he's supposed to call Cas— _coworker_ doesn't feel right, and Dean's trying really hard not to overanalyze that) isn't exactly a common occurrence. Sam is a proud father smiling at his kid for making friends on the first day of kindergarten, and it chafes against Dean like his chest binder on a hot day.  

"Well, go ahead," Sam finally says, breaking what could have turned into an awkward silence. "Don't let me stop you! I'm Sam, by the way. What's your name? I’m not sure I caught it."  

"Castiel Milton," Cas says in that same quiet way he told Dean. "It's wonderful to meet you, Sam. You have excellent form."  

"Thanks!" Sam beams, and Dean wrenches himself off the couch and ushers Cas down the hallway before Sam loops him in to a conversation about the history of yoga or some shit.  

"You did me a solid, there, Cas," Dean says quietly when they're far enough down the hall to be out of Sam's earshot. "We can just waste a little time and then I'll get you that jump."  

"May I see the room?" Castiel asks, and Dean's heart just about stops entirely. "I'm glad to have done you...a solid, but I do happen to be looking for a room to let." His voice catches strangely and unfamiliarly around the slang.  

Dean stares at him for a second. "Seriously?"  

"I am very serious. If you'll have me, of course," Castiel says then, rushing through the second sentence and looking self-conscious about it.  

"No, I just...didn’t think it'd actually work out," Dean says in something like disbelief, then shakes himself off. "Anyway. I guess I'll show you the room, then?"  

"Please," Castiel says, so Dean leads the way.  

"It's kind of small," he says apologetically, pushing open the door and flicking on the lights. They're Edison bulbs, and they cast the room in buttery yellow. "And obviously we'd move this stuff out of here if you moved in."  

Castiel doesn’t say anything, and Dean turns to see that his face is frozen in genuine, slack-jawed awe. It's more than a little endearing, and Dean tucks his fond little grin away before he speaks. "You're a book guy, huh?" 

"You could say that," Cas breathes, and moves forward a little. "May I—?"  

"Go for it," Dean says, and Cas reaches out to touch one of the bookcases.  

The room belonged to Jo until she moved out, the smallest room by far but also the one with the most windows, all against the far wall looking out toward the main road. Pushed against the opposite wall are three wood-paneled curio cabinets that John used as bookshelves, packed tight with the books he cared about most in this world. Many of them are leather-bound and there is more than one special edition, all of them older than Dean's grandparents.  

"They're beautiful," Castiel finally says after a moment, "but why do you have rare books in your apartment?"  

Dean snorts, because it is so contrary to what he was expecting, but also because this is a valid question. "Honestly," he says, "I just couldn't bear to part with them. They were my dad's." The words are out before he realizes he's just dropped the dead dad bomb, so he forges ahead. "Uh, like I said, we'd get them out of here before you moved in."  

"Or you could leave them," Castiel murmurs, eyes darting back and forth as he scans the titles. "God, is that a  _livre_ _d'_ _artist_ _?"_  

On some level, Dean registers that this a very pretentious question, and also that there is just something strange about the way Castiel speaks, like everything he says has been polished beforehand. On another, baser level, he finds it frustratingly hot. "Uh, that sounds like a question I should maybe know the answer to, but honestly, these were my dad's thing. I haven't opened up any of the books since he died. I keep the shelves dusted, but I'm not much of a literature person."   

"Are you a book person?" Castiel asks.  

"Come on, you can be one or the other. People can like books without liking capital L literature," he says, turning to look at Dean with this ridiculously excited expression. It's kind of heartwarming. "You know, people who hate Hemingway but loved Twilight."   

Dean may or may not have the entire saga on the much smaller, far less decorative bookshelf beside his bed, but Castiel doesn't need to know that. "Interesting distinction. Yeah, I guess I am."   

"I knew it. Team Edward or Team Jacob?"   

" _Wow_ I hate this conversation."   

Castiel smirks and turns back to the shelves with a quiet sort of reverence that makes Dean smile. It also makes his heart ache a little because it reminds him so much of his dad, but it's an ache that has dulled with the passage of time.    

"So," Dean says, trying to sound casual, "Are you a student at UNC?"  

"Yes," Castiel replies, still scanning book titles with a feverish intensity that skirts close to lunacy. "I'm a senior. Are you?"  

"Yeah," Dean says thinly. There's still a chance, he tells himself. "Senior, too. Pre-med."  

"I'm a double major. Classics and Theology. Not the most practical, I know," Castiel says, sheepishly, like he's used to people reacting poorly to it.  

Fuck. God fucking damn it.  

"Oh!" Dean says, forcibly infusing his voice with something akin to enthusiasm. "That's really cool. Um. Side note, just by the way..."  

Castiel looks at him inquiringly. Fuck.  

"My dad's name was John Winchester?"  

Castiel freezes. To his credit, he reigns in the incredulous expression relatively quickly.  

"Dean," he says instead, very sincerely, turning to look at him with sad, sad eyes. "Dean, I am so sorry."  

"Don't be," Dean mumbles, looking down, rubbing at the back of his neck.  "I just, uh, wanted you to know from me. 'Cause if you live here, you gotta understand that people are gonna talk. They always do, about us. 'Specially when they hear our last name."  

"Dean  _Winchester_ ," Castiel realizes all at once, and then, with that painful sincerity again, "I wouldn't listen."  

Dean smiles despite himself. "Thanks, Cas."  

Castiel clears his throat, straightening up from where he's bent to pore over the books. "Dean, I have something to tell you as well."  

 _This is it,_ Dean thinks.  _He doesn't want the room. Doesn't want to live with the bereaved Winchesters. It's too much. Just give him the jump and go back to never speaking again._  

"I was studying under Professor Winchester," he says instead, and oh, okay. Which is to say,  _what the fucking shit, how many motherfucking coincidences can there feasibly be in one 12-hour period_ , but okay, it's better than what Dean was expecting. "I was a teaching assistant, and I was helping him restore his book collection." He glances back to the shelves. "I should have recognized them immediately, but I never saw them on the shelves..."  

Dean's glad Cas isn't looking at him anymore, because he can't vouch for what his face is doing. The ache John left is healing, dulled with the passage of time, but it still hurts if Dean picks at it. Cas studied with John. Cas knew him in a way Dean never did,  _never will,_ his brain screams, and something about that is just, well.  

Castiel is beautiful, and he is wearing a yellow sweater, and he likes Dean's car, and the only reason he cares that Dean's last name is Winchester is because  _he_ doesn't want to be inconsiderate to  _Dean._  

So, fuck.  

"Well, now that we've got the awkward parts out of the way," Dean says, and Castiel flashes him a genuine smile, and it is positively  _blinding_. He recovers from his seven consecutive heart attacks before continuing, "I can show you the rest of the apartment."  

It doesn't take long; their three-bedroom student apartment doesn't exactly contain multitudes. Sam seems to have jumped in the shower, so Dean shows Cas everything but the bathroom, and they end up standing across from each other at the kitchen counter. Dean leans a little, his lungs started to act up from binding for so long. "So yeah, that's the place. Any clutter you see is mine because Sam is an android, probably."  

Castiel smiles, and Dean's cardiac health continues to worsen,  _God_ those fucking smiles. "Can you prove it?"  

"Irrefutably. Evidence: runs for fun. Consumes spinach, also for fun. Wakes up and goes to bed at the same time every day. Possibly irons his clothes, but I'm still not sure on that one."   

"He sounds...pretty human. Perhaps you're the android."  

"No, I just have depression," Dean says before he can stop himself.  

Castiel throws his head back and laughs, and it makes Dean feel so fucking warm. Has he mentioned recently that he is completely screwed?  

"God, my brother  _hates_ that shit. It'll be nice to have someone who can take a joke around here when you move in."  

Castiel straightens up. " _When_ I move in?"   

"What can I say. You sold me. If you want to live here, I want you to live here." He smiles, small.   

 _It was kind of a done deal when you said you worked with John Winchester_ , Dean doesn't say. T _he way you talk to me like I'm a normal person and the fact that you're fucking gorgeous are just bonuses._

"There is one more thing," he says, steeling himself. Much of his life is spent steeling himself. He pauses, waiting for Castiel to make a joke, to grin another heart-stopping grin, but he just looks at Dean curiously. "I'm trans. I wasn't born a male but I am and always have been a boy. I bind my chest and live as a male and use he/him pronouns. If you don't understand it, that's okay, but I will demand a certain level of respect in my own home, and it'd be preferable if that respect was voluntary." The speech is well-oiled from use, but Dean's voice still shakes.   

"Is that all?" Castiel says, and Dean feels his entire body slump in relief. "I mean, of course, Dean. I'm not ignorant."   

"Oh, yeah, right. Thank you, gentle cis man. I worship at the holy altar of your allyship." He says it like a joke, but it takes effort to get out, because despite everything, it's taken him years to give this speech to a receptive audience and not feel like he's been granted a favor.   

It's taken him years to say  _I'm here_  and not have it come out as  _I'm sorry_.   

When he told Sam, it had been this whole thing, Sam reaching across the table to clasp one of Dean's hands in both of his,  _you know I'm_ here  _for you, right_? Dean's Facebook messages are full of Sam sending him every post he sees with the word trans in it, and like yeah, Sam, you're very sweet and supportive, but sometimes Dean just wants to be Dean, you know?   

It's just that Dean's known Cas for all of a few hours and he already feels so goddamn understood.  

"I'm happy to pay whatever Jo's share was," Castiel says, because yeah, you think Dean can give a tour of his apartment and not talk about her? That's cute. Jo picked everything from light bulbs to area rugs. This is only not her apartment in that she does not physically live in it anymore. "And if you would be willing to leave Professor Winchester's books in there, I would be honored."  

"Consider it done," Dean says, smiling a little. "Though get ready for Sam to talk about it all the time. He's really not on board with them being here."  

"I mean...religion isn't my cup of tea either, believe it or not, but I saw an original King James Bible. That alone has to be worth at least twenty grand. Literature person or not, that's...a really valuable thing to be keeping in your rented apartment."   

Dean's eyes flit to the tiled floor, and he can feel Castiel's gaze on him, and he knows he's biting his lip, something he does often enough that one side of it is slightly larger than the other.   

"Oh...Dean, I apologize. I didn't mean to intrude." It's that stiff formality from their almost-collision at the hospital again, and when Dean glances up, Castiel is backing away from the counter, hands folded behind his back. "I'm sure they're insured, or...even if they're not...I just mean, it's your business, of course. I apologize."   

"No, it's fine." Castiel seems to be edging toward the door, so Dean drifts into the living room, fiddles with Sam's car keys to have something to do with his hands. Castiel stands beside the couch, awkwardly adjusting his collar. "You're right. My brother just kind of went a little crazy getting rid of his stuff when he died, and he wanted to donate them to the university. I probably should have let him, but..." He shrugs and puts down the keys, wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans. "It's not like these are even all the books he had. There's probably hundreds in my storage. But I'm ridiculous, and they were just his  _thing_ , and for some reason the thought of them just sitting in a dusty room with boxes of his old clothes and the lawnmower and literal cobwebs just didn't sit right, so."   

"So you brought them here." Castiel looks at him like he understands, and isn't just that the worst fucking thing? "I get it."   

"I kind of do want to donate them, as it turns out," and wow, okay, Dean didn't realize that until he says it out loud. "I'm just a little worried because I haven't exactly been maintaining them or whatever. I wouldn't even know where to start. If I'm going to let the university open up the  _John Winchester Memorial Library_  or whatever the fuck, I don’t want to give them dusty books with cracked spines, you know? He would've hated that."   

Castiel clears his throat, licks his lips a little, and wow, okay, Dean's feeling things again. "I don't know if this is something you'd even be comfortable with, but...I could continue the work I was doing with Professor Winchester. We were in the middle of restoring his collection, and I learned his technique well. I still have access to the labs. I could take it one book at a time. With your approval, of course."  

Dean blinks. "Um...yeah. Yeah, okay. That's super cool of you, thank you."  

"Are you kidding?" Castiel blurts, and then scratches the back of his neck a little like he's embarrassed. "I mean, it's just that you're doing me a favor. John Winchester's book collection...I'll admit that I've missed them."  

Dean can't help the little smile that tugs his lips up, and seriously, he has to get these feelings under control, God, the guy hasn't even moved in yet.   

Before he can say anything, Castiel's face softens into that aching sympathy again. "And Dean...I miss him, as well. He was a good man."  

Dean kind of wants to cry, so suddenly and desperately that it takes his breath away for a second.  

"Cas," he says when he gets his voice back, "How soon can you move in?"  

Castiel beams. "How soon will you have me?"  

* 

When Sam gets out of the shower, Dean has settled into his favorite crease on the couch, laptop open as he slogs through an online French module.   

"What happened to Castiel?" He asks, shaking water out of his hair in the way he know Dean hates.  

"Finally drove him back and jumped his car," Dean says. "He says he'll take the room." 

Sam startles. "Wow, that was fast. Did you agree on rent?"  

"Jo's share," Dean confirms.  

"I wish I could've talked to him more. He seems really interesting."  

Dean doesn't know what to say to that that won't be self-incriminating, so he just says, "He really likes yellow."    

"He does," Sam agrees, and flops down beside Dean on the couch. "I'm proud of you, dude."  

Sam grins wide and genuine in that way that makes it hard to dislike him, and that's the whole thing, really. He's perfect and hyper-functional and he drinks health shakes and wakes up at 7am on the weekends and doesn't drink soda because his body is a temple, but they grew up together, and he tries, and he's never misgendered Dean, not once, and after the first and only party Dean ever went to it was Sam who picked him up in his then-immaculate Ford Fiesta (him who didn't make a sound when Dean vomited all over the upholstery of said immaculate Ford Fiesta, just wordlessly handed him a napkin from the center console and tucked him in on the couch in the recovery position, who made sure he woke up with the blinds closed and with a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers next to him). He's Dean's baby brother, and maybe they don't have that much to talk about, but he understands things about Dean that would be hard to explain to anyone else, and he's sitting here grinning at Dean like he hung the moon.  

"When does he move in?"  

Dean turns back to his French module, studiously avoiding eye contact. "Tomorrow."  

"Oh, wow, so soon! I can't wait to get to know him." He wrenches himself off the couch— _goddamn_ _hyperactive giant little_ _brothers_ , Dean grouses mentally, and hears the fridge open and close, hears the clatter of Sam getting out the ingredients for his dinner (Dean would bet money that it involves quinoa).   

"Yeah, I think you'll like him," Dean replies, and then more quietly, "Oh, and he worked with Dad."   

The rustling in the kitchen pauses, then starts again almost as suddenly as it had stopped. "Does he...?"  

"Yeah, I told him. Didn't seem to bother him. He really likes the books."   

"The books," Sam murmurs, and oh God, not this again, but Sam is already following up with "Have you thought any more about what you're going to do with them?"   

Dean takes a deep breath and feels it stutter a little in his chest, reminding him he's been binding for a bit too long. "Yeah, actually. They were working on restoring the books when Dad died. He said he'd help me get them back into shape and I think I'll donate them to the university."   

"Oh," Sam says, pleasantly, and Dean reminds himself that Sam is good, that Sam is only doing what he thinks is best, that most rational people would question the wisdom of having cases of books worth thousands of dollars in an apartment not known for its impenetrable security measures. "That's really cool. He sounds like a really neat guy, Dean."  

Dean thinks of yellow-tinted glasses, of that scar on his face and the way he looked at Dean like he understands him. "Yeah," he says softly. "He really is."   

He closes his laptop, dismisses himself on the grounds of needing to shower. He gives Sam a little nod before he goes, glances at the counter.   

Quinoa. He knew it.   

 *

Dean thinks about his dad every day, and that is no euphemism. He drifts past the extra room ( _Cas's_ room, he thinks, something blooming in his chest in a way he doesn’t want to deal with right now) and sees his books, catches sight of the scar on his knee he got the first and last time he and his dad went fishing when they were supposed to be studying for Dean's math test the next day, when a stray hook went straight through and he needed stitches, remembers the ice cream after,  _I'm not going to say don't tell your mom, but I'm going to say I won't if you won't,_  and he smiles, just a little (he didn't tell his mother). He lays in the bed across from a desk that's been flush to the wall underneath the window since the day his dad built it, the one they picked out together at IKEA before Dean moved in, the one that had him muttering profanities for three hours on a blisteringly hot day in August while Ellen poked her head in intermittently,  _how are those PhDs treating you, Dr. Winchester?_   Dean thinks about his dad all the time.   

It's just that he can't remember the day he died.   

It's just that he knows that he's the one who found the body, that he's the one who, somehow, called 911, who let Sam cling to him when the ambulance came, but he knows it the way you know stories about your fourth birthday party or your first day of school—more retelling than memory. Something you know because you're told.   

If he tries hard enough, he thinks he can remember what Sam was wearing that day, what the perfume of the hospital secretary smelled like, but he can't for the life of him remember his dad's face, what the last thing he said to him was. And when it comes down to it, maybe he doesn’t remember what Sam was wearing at all, maybe he just remembers him saying at the funeral,  _he bought me this tie_ _, you know._  

You'd be surprised how many people come to a funeral for a professor, how many handshakes and hugs Sam and Dean got just for losing someone. How many looks of pity he got (gets) when they hear his name: Dean Winchester, the guy who found his dad dead.   

And he can't even remember it.   

 _Psychogenic amnesia_ , Dr. Cartwright told him in one of their first sessions, because yeah, when you're trans and you find your dad dead and can't fucking remember it, the one thing you spare no expense on is a really badass therapist. His brain couldn't handle what happened. He repressed it. It was the emotional shock, was the trauma, was the pain, yeah, Dean gets it.   

It's just that the one thing you should be allowed to hold onto are lasts, and Dean can't even remember his. He thinks of his dad and sees fishing, sees the lectures he sometimes sat in on, sees a receding hairline and eyes just like his and  _of course I still love you, sweetheart, daughter or son,_ _you're_ _family_ , and it aches.   

He wonders if Castiel's lost someone, if that's why he looked at him like that, eyes soft and understanding but not pitying.  _I get it_ , he said, and Dean believes him.   

Dean rolls that around in his head like a marble.  

 _I get it. I get it. I get it._   

Yellow's an awfully pretty color. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**2005**

 Ellen Harvelle is damn good at her job, even when her hands shake. She’s seen baby boys burned to death in fires, gunshot wounds to temples (or worse, gunshot wounds to mouths, craniums exposed like empty fruit bowls). She’s seen bodies that were left for weeks before they were found, smeared Vicks VapoRub under her nose and carried on like nobody’s business. She is, objectively speaking, a badass. 

Ellen Harvelle is damn good at her job, but this is Mary Winchester she’s looking at, and two weeks ago she was swapping pie recipes with Ellen, planning their group Thanksgiving. She’s having trouble looking down at her and not seeing those kids--too damn young to have lost their mother this way. Truth be told, there is upsettingly little left to identify. Fires are like that.

But her supervisor asked her if she could do this, and she said she could, because John Winchester is insisting on this autopsy, dragging out the funeral and putting those children through hell, not giving them the closure they need. (Because truth be told, the thought of anyone cutting Mary open like she’s any other cadaver that comes through their lab causes her pain, sharp and aching and difficult to describe.) 

She exhales, resolutely lowering her blade. 

*

The tox screen comes back abnormal. The problem is that it comes back abnormal in a way that Ellen has never seen. 

She lets out a breathy sigh. Her feet are aching, and the wall clock tells her she’s been at it for hours, but something feels profoundly wrong about leaving Mary here alone in the dark, half cut open and vulnerable. Halfway through, Ellen--steady-handed, badass Ellen--covered her face, charred and unrecognizable as it is. Even she has a limit. The tox screen is just another kink in an already-exhausting case, but she’ll be damned if she’s not going to be thorough. 

“Kevin?” she calls. It’s well past midnight, but the kid has been pulling strange hours, working three and four hour shifts that work with his course load. Sure enough, he pokes his head into the lab, looking a bit worse for wear. 

“Dr. Harvelle?”

“You sent in the tox screen on Mary Winchester, right?” 

“Yes ma’am,” Kevin says, eyes widening a little. He’s an intern, and she’s Ellen, meaning that he is slightly terrified of her. “Is there a problem?”

“There’s no chance the samples were compromised, I trust?” 

“None,” Kevin answers, very quickly, but Ellen trusts him. He does good work. Has a bright future ahead of him, she thinks. 

“Thank you,” Ellen says, and nods her head in dismissal. Kevin nods back, popping back out of the lab as quickly as he appeared. He’s a pathology intern, and he prefers to stay in the lab, as far as Ellen can tell. She understands. 

She frowns, gaze returning to the tox screen results. The thing about the tox screen is that it’s presenting as though Mary Winchester was poisoned, but not by any substance Ellen has ever seen before. 

The thing is that Mary Winchester died in a fire. 

Ellen sighs, resigning herself to the fact that this is not going to be an open-book case. Strange tox screen results mean bringing the chem team in, and the issue isn’t pressing enough to call them in at this hour. She scrubs a weary hand across her face, and the light above her flickers. A strange coldness has settled over her, a feeling she hasn’t felt since her own internship, the kind of heebie jeebies that come with being in close proximity to dead bodies late at night. It’s been years since she’s been bothered by it, but she can’t stop thinking about Mary’s face underneath that tarp she’s pulled over it. 

She’s being ridiculous, she tells herself, overly-emotional because this case is close to her personal life. There is some more work she can do tonight, she resolves, and she picks up her blade again. 

They had trouble getting a blood sample from Mary, something that they put down to the sorry state of her remains--fire, Ellen thinks, is the worst way to go--but again, Ellen is covering all her bases on this. She’s made a note to herself to pay special attention to blood coagulation, and she’s in the middle of her incision when she does a double take. 

There  _is_ no blood coagulation. 

To be more specific, there is no blood at all. Ellen blinks, then blinks again. Hair prickles on the back of her neck. All of the organs look normal, save the kidney Mary donated to a friend in her early thirties, but where there should be blood coagulating and thickening in the capillaries, there is...nothing. 

Ellen is hyper-aware of the gruesome grin Mary’s face is pulled into underneath the sheet, of the flickering fluorescent lights and the smell of death permeating her nostrils. Suddenly and undeniably, she is terrified, and she drops her blade with a clatter, jerking the sheet over Mary’s body. 

Tomorrow, she decides. Tomorrow she’ll come back and reevaluate, when she’s had enough sleep. She’s tired, that’s all. Overwrought. 

She’s almost to a car when she’s stopped by a cold, hard hand gripping her wrist. She has time to yelp in surprise before her mouth is being covered by another hand, a cloying scent filling her nostrils. 

“Mary Winchester died in a fire,” says a voice, and her head is yanked to the side, to a pair of yellow eyes boring into hers. She’s shaking, she thinks, and dimly she is registering terror, fight-or-flight, but she is transfixed by those eyes, dizzied by the scent filling her lungs. “There is nothing strange for you to put in your report.” 

“Nothing strange,” she murmurs in reply behind the hand, her tense muscles slackening as the fight drains out of her. Her mind is cloudy. 

“That’s right. Mary Winchester died in a fire. Say it back to me, would you, sweetheart?” 

“Mary Winchester died in a fire,” she parrots back obediently. “Nothing strange to put in my report.” 

“Good.” The hand releases her wrist, pulls away from her mouth to let her breath fresh air. “That’s good, Dr. Harvelle.” 

“Good,” Ellen murmurs. 

   
Later on, Ellen will find it strange that she can’t remember the time between leaving work and driving home, that there’s a chunk of missing time there, but she’ll put it off to exhaustion. She’ll think nothing of the strange herbal smell that has been trailing her all day; she puts it off to a mixture of her rosemary-scented shampoo and the grime of working a few days in a row. She’ll chastise herself for sloppily leaving a body cavity open when she should have sutured the incisions the night before, signing off on the death certificate with a morose shake of her head. She’s somewhat puzzled by the unlabeled tox screen results lying near the exam table, and she shakes her head again--it’s probably the work of one of their newer interns, and she throws it into the growing pile of things that need to be filed. They’ll figure it out later. 

“She didn’t feel it,” she’ll lie to a grieving John Winchester, a hand on his shoulder. “She was gone before the flames got to her. Smoke inhalation.” 

Mary Winchester died in a fire. Ellen’s heart aches for John, for the kids. 

After all, fire is the worst way to go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> interlude! real chapter going up tomorrow. tumblr is sighfrancisco if u wanna chat or tell me i suck xoxo


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for transphobic violence/assault & internalized victim blaming toward the end of this chapter. stay safe!! 
> 
> shoutout 2 my beta, thelyssymarie!

Castiel is moving in  _ after two but before five _ , but it is also Tuesday, meaning that his alarm goes off at 9am so that he'll have enough time to lay in bed for an hour or so longer before hoisting himself up to put on appropriate clothing and drive himself downtown with barely enough time to be punctual to brunch with Gabriel at 11am.  

Castiel does not like mornings.   

This is why he does a double take when he stretches and glances at his clock to see that it's only a few minutes after eight, and even more perplexingly, that he's looking forward to getting ready. He's standing in front of his full-length mirror deciding between two sweaters (one mustard yellow, one navy blue dotted with white stars) before he realizes that he's only considering the yellow one because Dean had had so much trouble looking away from him in his other yellow sweater yesterday. He frowns and yanks on a collared denim button-down and then the navy blue sweater, rolling up his sleeves a bit more aggressively than is technically called for.  

Dean is good, Castiel thinks. Dean is good and kind, and Castiel cannot do this, cannot even think about doing this.  

He's breathing hard and he leans against the wall beside his mirror, casting a cursory glance around his dark bedroom. It's filled almost to capacity with boxes, most of their contents new, the others filled with his clothes, the only material possessions he lets himself hold onto. The only well-used items in the room—his plain mattress, sagging on its pathetic box spring, and a CD player that wheezed its last wheeze weeks ago—will not be coming with him. Everything else he'll cram into his Mercedes.  

He'll miss this place, he supposes, in that useless nostalgic way that has no basis in reality. He's not going to wax poetic on the perpetually damp air, the water stains on the popcorn ceiling or the busted window screens.  

He guesses what he's really going to miss is solitude, because there is a certain kind of safety in lonesomeness that he has taken for granted over the years. Like the proverbial fool who doesn't know what he has until it's gone, Castiel knows that he is on the edge of something, here, and he is frightened.  

The thing is that Castiel is not allowed to be frightened.  

This has to be done, and Castiel is the one who has to do it, and that, like so many other things in his life, is simply the way of things.  

He takes an unnecessary breath and calls Gabriel.  

"Little bro! You're up before noon!"

Castiel rolls his eyes, because despite everything, he is still capable of being annoyed by his older brother. Gabriel is an objectively ridiculous man.  

"Don't get used to it," he says, reaching into his pocket. His keys are there, of course. They always are. He flicks open his knife with his thumbnail, the motion easy from practice. It was a gift from Gabriel for his birthday last year, a short, cold-iron blade that looks like a key when he flicks it closed. "I was wondering if we could meet earlier than 11. I'm, uh, hungry."  

Castiel has to pull the phone away from his ear to save himself from Gabriel's top-volume belly laugh, no doubt in response to his obvious lie. "Eager, huh? Does Cassie have a cruuuuush?" 

Castiel's brows furrow. He doesn't understand his brother, sometimes, the way he can live the way they live and still be downright goofy.  

"I just want to get started, I guess. There's nothing left for me here."  

Gabriel goes a little somber, then, or at least as somber as he gets. "I get it. When can you be there?" 

"How soon can you meet me?" Castiel counters, and presses the button on his key fob to unlock his car, but not before slipping on his rumpled trenchcoat. It's the only article of clothing that he knows for a fact that Gabriel hates.  

 

* 

Castiel has mixed feelings about Carrboro, the little town just west of the university, with its clusters of locally-owned curiosity shops and its rainbow crosswalks. It's less crowded than the area immediately around the university but just as congested, and everyone is so nice to him, chirruping cheerful  _ good morning! _ s and  _ how are you? _ s when he passes them on the sidewalk. He is inconspicuous in an unassuming, progressive Southeastern town sort of way, but he is also extremely conspicuous as someone walking alone in an unassuming, progressive Southeastern town, and thus an ideal candidate for being showered with the well-meaning friendliness of strangers. Castiel isn't antisocial, but he would still rather be left unbothered. He flips up his collar, pulls his trenchcoat more tightly around himself.  

Elmo's Diner was one of Gabriel's finds, nestled in Carr Mill Mall. In World War II, Carr Mill was a munitions factory, and it was bought out by Pacific Mills after the war to become a woolen mill. It was briefly an underwear shipment facility—a fact that amuses Gabriel to no end—before being abandoned when Pacific Mills closed. They were going to demolish it, but the little Carrboro community petitioned to have it turned into Carr Mill Mall, a sturdy brick building with a couple of restaurants, a toy store, and a tea shop. Castiel tried to visit the tea shop once, and there was a guest speaker, for some reason, a woman with grey hair in braids down to her waist talking about aliens walking among us. Castiel does not believe in aliens, but she looked at him like she knew, and well. Castiel doesn't like tea that much anyway.  

Castiel  _ likes  _ Carrboro, is the thing. He likes buying fresh milk at the co-op grocery store, likes to listen to Missouri Moseley talk about her mom's recipes and peddle her cake mixes ( _ I'm gonna throw in something extra, honey _ , she always says, and Castiel invariably finds protective amulets and sachets tucked into his coat pockets, recipes passed down in Missouri's family as meticulously as the recipes she makes at her restaurant). He smiles at the middle schoolers in Panic! at the Disco shirts clustering to take pictures of themselves on the rainbow crosswalks. He likes that, to get himself out of an unfortunately awkward incident involving a very flirtatious waitress, he said, haltingly, without looking Gabriel in the eye,  _ uh, I—I have a boyfriend _ , and the waitress—Meg, he later learned—said,  _ Aw, Clarence, we're just playing here, that's all it is. My girlfriend and I could just eat you up. _ (He doesn't know why she called him Clarence. When he asked, she threw her head back and laughed.)  

Castiel likes Carrboro. But between Carr Mill Mall and the co-op is a Harris Teeter and a CVS, and there are as many white girls with matted "dreadlocks" as there are those selfie-taking middle schoolers, and last time he bought some of Missouri's cake mix she was crying.  _ Mama spent her whole life here _ , she said, voice trembling,  _ did you know that? Started that restaurant with sixty-four dollars, no more and no less, $40 for food and $24 to make change. Used the money she made at breakfast to make lunch and the money she made at lunch to make dinner. No recipes, no nothing, just her eyes and her mouth. _ Castiel remembers nodding, squeezing one of her hands that she'd placed in both of his.  _ She stayed here forever, spent her whole life building this community, and now I don't know if I'm gonna be able to afford to let her retire here. _

Castiel loves Carrboro, and that is the problem. They just built a Target on Franklin Street, and he's already hearing whispers at the farmer's market about making ends meet, about  _ not gonna be able to turn a profit _ , and Missouri's grandchildren run around outside without shoes on, half because they want to and half because they're the only shoes they'll get to have for the rest of the year and they want them to stay nice for church. It makes Castiel's heart ache.

But he comes to Elmo's, every Tuesday. And he keeps buying cake mix.   

Castiel pushes his way inside, nods at the tired-looking hostess who recognizes him by now. He slides into the booth across from Gabriel, who already has food on the table, one plate on Castiel's side, one on his. Really, it's just Gabriel's order twice.  

"Howdy, Clarence," Meg purrs, and Castiel looks up in surprise to see her sauntering over the table. Ruby—the girlfriend, Castiel learned some time ago, who does in fact look like she would eat him—trails after her with an amused expression. The restaurant is fairly empty, and he supposes they have nothing better to do. Ruby semi-permanently has that look on her face, like everything Meg does is funny in just the right ways. When Ruby isn't looking, Meg looks at her the same way. It's love, Castiel guesses. He's glad for them. "Anything I can get for you?" 

"As usual, no," Castiel says, perhaps more flatly than he entirely means to, because he is accustomed to Meg's antics. Still, he adds a perfunctory, "But thank you."  

Meg doesn't push, just clears Gabriel's already-empty plate and snorts as Gabriel drags "Castiel's" plate toward himself. Castiel doesn't eat his—never does—but Meg doesn't question it, not ever, and for that Castiel is unbelievably grateful. He doesn't think for a second that she doesn't notice, that she doesn't  _ know _ , and that's the thing about Carrboro, really. This town, and these people—so many of them have a way of knowing in the most italicized sense of the word, a deep and perceptive kind of knowing. They've grown up with the old magic of kudzu and jimson weed, of lightning bugs clasped in their palms, of preachers who believe the words in the Holy Book, believe fire and brimstone, as feverishly as most people believe in the earth going around the sun. There's something about growing up surrounded by belief like that that breathes a different kind of understanding into them.  

Castiel was afraid, at first, but now it's familiar. Comforting. The way Meg looks at him when she thinks he isn't paying attention, like he's a puzzle she's trying to figure out, may as well be a mother's lullaby. It means Castiel is real. It means that he is not quite as far removed from reality as he thinks he is.  

"I hate that damn coat," Gabriel says then, pulling Castiel from his mental abstraction. "I keep telling you you need to let me dress you once. Just once, and you'll see how much potential you have."  

"I like my clothes," he says with the simplicity of someone who has had this fight many times. His nose wrinkles in disgust as he watches Gabriel shovel down his second helping of hashbrowns, licking crumbs off his lips. It wouldn't be so bad if Gabriel didn't insist on smearing them with strawberry jam. His exasperation at his own brother makes him think of Dean, of the disdain in his voice when he talked about Sam's yoga and his  _ damned health shakes,  _ and Castiel shoves that thought back where it belongs.  

"So what is he like?" Gabriel asks with his mouth full, so so much for that. "Did he suspect?"  

"Suspect what?" Castiel says irritably, keeping his eyes on his hands. He'd usually tear up his napkin for something to do with them, but he's been toying with the rack of jam sitting on the table by the napkin dispenser. He picks up a container of strawberry to fight the urge to empty the rack and count them all. He looks at the light reflecting off its foil cover, tilts it so it alternates between reflecting and not reflecting. "He was...kind, and welcoming. He had no problem with me moving in so soon." Reflecting, not reflecting. Reflecting, not reflecting.  

"Good. That's good." Gabriel takes a swig from his massive mug of hot chocolate, and when he comes up for air he has a whipped-cream mustache.  

_ I feel strange about this, Gabriel _ , Castiel wants to say.  _ I don't usually mind, but this one feels...different.  _

He's working himself up to maybe saying it out loud, but then Gabriel states, very decisively, “As much as I love these brunches of ours, Cassie, it is especially important today. We have a dick problem." 

Castiel wonders if this is a joke about Dean, and says flatly, "What." 

"A Dick Roman problem, to be precise," Gabriel says, and slaps a newspaper down in front of Castiel. 

_ ROMAN BREATHES NEW LIFE INTO CARRBORO, _ screams the headline, with a photo of the man himself grinning sleazily into the camera, posing in front of the Target's double doors. Castiel notices, not without bitterness, that they have cropped out the protestors who were posted just to the left of the entrance. 

" _ Roman  _ is behind this? Why?" 

"Not just the Target, bro. Read the article."

Castiel's eyes widen the more he reads. " _ What _ ?" 

"I know. If the hard-hitting journalism is to be believed, Dick Roman Enterprises isn't stopping with Target. They want to completely overrun this place."

"They have no reason to lie to the people," Castiel murmurs uselessly, his brow furrowing as he gets to the part of the article that details the corporation's plan to construct more mainstream stores as cheaply and quickly as possible:  _ According to Dick Roman, CEO and founder of Dick Roman Enterprises, "People want brands they can recognize. It's all about brand recognition. By making Carrboro and Chapel Hill a hub for those kinds of stores, we're going to ultimately bring in more people than ever before." In response to the concerns raised by protestors concerning how this plan will impact local business, Roman had this to say: "That's ludicrous. The more people we bring in with these big-name stores, the more people there are for those local businesses that Carrboro prides itself on." He went on to say, "At Dick Roman Enterprises, it's all about the people.  _

"That's not how that works," Castiel says, looking up from the paper. "He's going to bankrupt these people. He's going to drive them from their own homes!" He thinks of Missouri, his chest tightening. (He thinks of  _ Dean,  _ and hates how gently he pushes the thought away.) 

"Thank you, Captain Obvious. Like I said. We have a Dick Problem."

Castiel is opening his mouth to object, but then Gabriel pauses mid-bite, eyes focused on a place somewhere behind Castiel's right shoulder.  

"What is it?" Castiel murmurs, muscles tensing reflexively. His hands, still tilting the jam back in forth, clench into fists around it.  

"At the Harris Teeter." Gabriel puts down his fork, and without moving his gaze puts a wad of cash on the table beside his plate. "We have a problem, little bro. Non-Dick-related."  

"We always have a problem," Castiel says, very quietly, because in truth doing what they do is still better than doing nothing.  

"Go out the back door and I'll meet you there, okay? Bring the car around."  

"Okay," Castiel says, and Gabriel is gone. He can be fast and practical when he wants to be, which is rarely.  

"Peeling out already, Clarence?" Meg calls. So she was paying attention after all, not just making out with Ruby in the kitchen.  

"Why do you call me that?" Cas asks, futilely. This, too, is a fight he's had many times.

Maybe he looks as wrung-out as he feels, because Meg's face softens marginally as she watches him stand up, push in his chair after himself.  

"Dunno," she says, and shrugs. "I guess nicknames are my love language." 

She gives him a wink, of course, because any interaction with Meg would be incomplete without blurring the line between conversation and flirtation, and Castiel bites his cheek to keep from smiling. He needs to move.  

He considers the wad of cash, then considers Meg's shirt, long-sleeved and wearing thin in places, completely inadequate for keeping her warm, considers how she, too, is probably suffering from how Carrboro is changing.  

How she's going to keep suffering, if Dick Roman goes through with his plans.

"Keep the change," he says quickly, and he's out the door and halfway to the Mercedes before he realizes he's still holding the little packet of jam. He slides it into the breast pocket of his jacket.  

_ I guess nicknames are my love language _ , he hears Meg saying in his head, feels the packet of jam jostling close to his heart. He thinks of Dean calling him Cas, how the nickname settled like a blanket on his shoulders, easy and familiar and right.  

He cranks up the car and thumbs at his key-knife. He wonders if Dean ever goes to Elmo's, if he sits across the table from Sam or Jo or anyone and laughs open and red-faced at someone's joke, initiating conversation around bites of toast. He wonders if he spreads jam on it, if he prefers strawberry or orange marmalade.  

It's probably been enough time, now. He cranks up the car and thinks maybe he'll leave the jam packet where it is, out of sight but noticeable against his chest. It reminds him that Dean is kind, that Dean is so, so fragile. 

It reminds him that he's not allowed to have this. 

*

When Castiel pulls the car around to the Harris Teeter, Gabriel is waiting at the curb. As he edges closer to the passenger door, Castiel sees him tuck his blade back into his sleeve, dripping with black blood. He's holding a paper grocery bag in one hand.  

"How many?" Castiel murmurs.

"Three," Gabriel says, voice tired. In their line of work, it is not particularly uncommon to have to kill their own kind, but it always hits Gabriel particularly hard. "And they were all hunting the same guy."  

" _ What _ ?"   

Daytime hunts are rare. Group hunts are rarer. The odds of both happening at once are slim to none, and yet the black blood that's starting to seep through Gabriel's shirtsleeve is as convincing evidence as any.

"I should clarify that is not just any guy,” Gabriel intones, and Castiel goes very still. “It’s Sam Winchester.”  

“What are the odds of that?” Castiel asks rhetorically.

“They already think that the Winchesters know something. The fact that you’re getting so closely involved probably just confirmed it.”

“They didn’t waste any time,” Castiel murmurs. He feels sick, the knowledge of what could have happened had he not just  _ happened  _ to ask Gabriel to meet him earlier than usual heavy in his stomach.

“You can say that again. Fucking creeps.” Gabriel's grip on the paper bag tightens, crinkling in his fist.

"Do you think there will be more?" (What he really wants to ask is,  _ is  _ Dean  _ safe?,  _ the question reverberating so loudly and urgently in his skull that he’s sure Gabriel can hear it.) 

Gabriel meets Castiel's eyes. "I think we have some time, but...yeah. They were working for someone."  

Castiel hisses out a curse, resting his forehead on the steering wheel. "Any idea who?"

"Someone big," Gabriel shrugs. "They wouldn't name them, and there are only a few people with that kind of intimidation factor."  

"Fuck," Castiel says. He doesn't swear often, but there is little else to say in this particular situation. "We have to tell Naomi."  

"I imagine she'll want to call a meeting," Gabriel affirms, scratching at his forearm, where the blood is no doubt beginning to coagulate on his skin. "As if she didn’t already have a bug up her ass about the roommate thing. And I have to take care of  _ this  _ now." He gesticulates wildly with the paper sack. "Looks like you'll have to postpone move-in."  

* 

Dean wakes up early in that strange way that happens to him sometimes, groggy-calm, opening his eyes to stare up placidly at the ceiling. When they first moved in, he and Sam got wine drunk and stuck glow-in-the-dark stars up there. "I'm gonna give you the  _ best  _ constellations," Sam slurred, because he was, despite being taller than some buildings Dean has seen, a lightweight, but as it turned out the only one either of them knew was the big dipper, so that's what they did, over and over and over. Big dipper after big dipper after big dipper.  

Dean smiles at the memory and has approximately two more peaceful seconds before his brain explodes with  _ Cas, Cas, Cas,  _ and he bolts upright with the sudden, crushing terror that he's slept too late, that he's missed it, but his clock reads 10am and he sags, relieved. It's Tuesday, so he doesn't have any classes, and this is probably the first Tuesday he's woken up before 2pm all semester. Weird.

He sits there for a second, a strange but familiar feeling welling in his gut that he recognizes as anxiety—not just anxiety, but  _ nerves,  _ about-to-go-onstage nerves, high-school-graduation-and-my-name-is-next nerves. He's not stupid. He knows there's a one-to-one correlation between this feeling and the fact that is he going to be seeing Cas later today. He's just having trouble getting over how monumentally  _ stupid _ that is.  

As it stands, he can't think of a single problem he's ever had that's been made worse by showering, and his back aches from binding his chest, so basically he can't think of anything he wants more in this moment than water as hot as it will go, his bougie peppermint-scented shampoo, his bathrobe. He heaves himself off his bed, albeit reluctantly, and shuffles into the bathroom.

The thing about Dean, he thinks as he waits for the water to heat up, is that he doesn't hate his body the way he's supposed to, the way they tell you you're supposed to, because his body has never been the real problem. It's not his smooth, unstubbled face that he hates. It's not his soft body, his curves, the chest he binds every day; it's not even the hair he chopped off as soon as he told John, _ Dad, I'm not your daughter, I'm your son.  _ Yeah, he feels more comfortable when he has his binder on, but he thinks that's mostly because the problem isn't his body, it's other people's assumptions about it. The problem isn't that his body isn't a boy's; the problem is that it  _ is,  _ but no one else saw it until he changed his name and cut his hair and started binding, and well.  

Of course he gets dysphoria sometimes. He steps into the shower, and yeah, it's a day where he has trouble feeling at home in his skin, but.  

The thing about Dean is that his body is not the problem.  

By the time he gets out of the shower, it's only 11, and he's feeling restless and doesn't want food yet, so he sits on his bed, fidgeting restlessly, before he realizes who he wants to talk to about... _ this _ , this feeling in his belly like he swallowed a fish.  

He decides to call Jo. 

 

"So what I'm getting is that he's incredibly hot, incredibly intelligent, and you've dropped the dead dad bomb  _ and  _ the trans bomb."   

"That...sums it up very concisely, yeah," Dean says, sighing and flopping back onto his bed. "But I've talked to him for a grand total of...I don't even know, an hour, maybe? So let's reign in the value judgements."   

"Not only did you drop those bombs, but he just  _ rolled  _ with them."   

"Yes, Jo."   

"That's kind of perfect."   

"I don't know. I'm not going to give him too many points for the trans thing. That's just him not being a shitty human. The dad thing, though."

"The  _ dad _ thing though," Jo replies, emphatically, and Dean misses her so badly that his chest aches.   

Jo Harvelle is the one person from high school that Dean didn't completely sever ties with. Her mother, Ellen, is the medical examiner over on the far side of Durham, and her dad, Bobby, is the chief of police. It's not that Dean's parents were  _ bad,  _ exactly, it's just that they were often  _ gone,  _ John off guest lecturing and Mary busy first with going back to school for nursing, and later on, pulling graveyard shifts at the hospital, and later on, when Dean turned seven, she was just in the graveyard dead, and John kept guest-lecturing, kept staying absorbed in his now-all-important research. There were always seats for Sam and Dean at Ellen and Bobby's table, he and Jo kicking each other's shins just out of Ellen's view. Before Dean was  _ Dean _ , he and Jo braided each other's hair and let Bobby teach them about cars in equal measure, Jo patiently letting Dean do her makeup sometimes (he never liked wearing it himself) in between their competitions to see who could shoot the most bottles off the old wood fence out back. Later on, they traded bottle-shooting for sneaking out to the only bar in town that didn't card, a seedy place with an arcade on the first floor, where Jo would bat her lashes and make bets with beer-drunk, middle-aged men, shattering high scores on all the games that used a gun (until, of course, the night Dean decided to try tequila, the night that he only remembers in flashes, vomiting on his shoes until his stomach cramped emptily, Jo's tears, Ellen's stormy face and her eyes full of concern, an IV in his arm and hair being smoothed back from his face,  _ no, baby, we know you're sorry, we won't tell your daddy _ ). And then when Dean became himself, traded short skirts for flannel and boot-cut jeans, it was Jo who cut his hair over the kitchen sink with a pair of rusty scissors (Ellen whose eyes grew big as saucers in abject horror, who took the scissors for herself and gave him something resembling a decent haircut).    

So yeah, when Dean erased everyone else from his life before college (except Sam, obviously), erased every trace that Deanna ever existed, Jo stayed. Jo was always going to stay. Ellen wanted her to be a nurse, but to no one's surprise, Jo would have nothing to do with that. She's going to a two-year college to get her degree in  _ mortuary science _ , which makes her infinitely more interesting then Dean will ever be, but also makes her kind of disgusting to talk to.  

Exhibit A. "Ugh. You're getting to demystify uber-hot Sweater Guy. Meanwhile I'm pretty sure I've figured out where the smell is coming from, and the answer is  _ all of the clothes I've worn to lab in the last week.  _ The lab with  _ dead people, Dean." _

"Um."   

"My clothes smell like  _ dead people.  _ Mom, my clothes smell like dead people. My mom just walked in, Dean. She says hi."   

"Hi, Ms. Harvelle."   

"Dean says hi, Ms. Harvelle. Dean, my mom says  _ shut up, you haven't called her Ms. Harvelle since kindergarten, it's just Ellen and you know it. _ "  Dean hears the words twice—once from Ellen murmuring in the background and again from Jo's spot-on impression—and he feels warm, feels something akin to homesickness.  

"Anyway. Your boy," Jo says decisively before Dean can wallow too much.  

"He is not  _ my  _ boy. I can't stress this enough. We basically stalked him for  _ months,  _ Jo, and he finally talked to me. He's  _ intriguing.  _ He talks like he's never really talked to people before, and I just...I don't know. I feel like there's more there.  _ Intriguing. _ "   

Jo gives an exasperated huff so familiar that Dean can see the face she's making, can practically feel the puff of breath on his cheek the way he used to when they'd lay on his bed at home, curled together like a couple of parentheses. “Counter argument: _ we basically stalked him for months,  _ Dean _.”  _ She lowers her voice in a pretty decent imitation of his. “I’d say that makes him your  _ something.” _

“Fuck you,” Dean says, but he’s biting the inside of his cheek to keep the smile out of his voice.

Jo, for all of her and Dean’s outlandish shenanigans, only got suspended once in high school, and it was for Dean.

It was in gym class--Dean swears to this day that gym class is an unjust institution designed to pit high schoolers into some  _ Hunger Games _ bullshit. Dean had just come out to his father a couple months before, and as such been on testosterone for a couple months. The transition from  _ Deanna  _ to  _ Dean  _ was hard at school, but if he wasn’t feeling brave, Dean just told people it was a nickname he preferred, and no one cared enough to press the issue. It wasn’t until he cut his hair and started binding his chests that certain problems arose.

Certain problems, of course, primarily refers to Alistair, a greasy, weaselly guy that Dean had the pleasure of enduring from kindergarten until the day he graduated ( _ and even then _ , Dean thinks now, bitterly. Alistair got into UNC on a full scholarship. He’s a business major, which came as a surprise to no one).  

“You’re in the wrong locker room, Winchester,” Alistair hissed that day, far too close to Dean for his liking. He remembers squeezing his eyes shut against the onslaught of sour breath, reflexively pulling his crumpled t-shirt to his chest.

“I’m not,” Dean said, voice wavering, because it had taken several angry phone calls on John’s part and some tenuously legal under-the-table funding for the school library, but Dean was changing in the boys’ locker room with the law (and the principal) on his side.

“You won’t mind if I check to be sure,” Alistair purred then, reaching around Dean to cup his chest in his binder, and before Dean could say anything, Benny--also a longtime classmate of Dean’s--put a hand on Alistair’s shoulder.

“Dude,” he said, and Dean remembers opening his eyes, daring to hope. “Cut it out. Just let Dean be.”

Alistair slunk away, but not before pinching Dean’s ass when Benny’s head turned.

“Thanks,” he managed to squeak out to Benny, before throwing on his shirt and grabbing his sneakers, resolving to put them on on the bleachers. 

Jo noticed immediately, of course.

“Dean? You look like you did that time you tried to out-hot-dog Sam.”

Dean hung his head, trembling a little, and he just about lost it when Jo’s voice softened.

“Dude, seriously, what’s up? Are you okay?”

Dean told her what happened in a voice barely louder than a whisper. Before he could do anything about it, Jo was up and off the bleachers. He barely had time to register who he was marching toward before she punched Alistair in the face, hard, enough for him to curse and clasp both hands to his face, blood spurting through his fingers.

“Welcome,” she said grandly, cutting Dean a vindictive grin he remembers clear as day, “to the 21st century, asshole. We respect people and we punch transphobes in the face.”

“Jo!” Dean called in shock, but the gym coach was already running toward her. She didn’t fight when he told her on no uncertain terms to hoof it to the principal’s office.

“It didn’t even bother me that much,” Dean lied feebly, later on when they were sitting cross-legged on Ellen’s couch. (Ellen was angry for about a minute and a half, but when she heard what happened, she rerouted them to Dairy Queen.  _ Anything you want, baby,  _ she said, kissing Jo on the top of the head, and then Dean, too.)

“Maybe not,” Jo said, not calling him on his bluff, “but it bothered me.” 

And it’s not like Alistair  _ stopped  _ after that, but it was still incredibly badass, and Dean is remembering this and is swelling with love for Jo, is going to ask her if she remembers, when she says "Shit, Dean, I'm running later than I thought. I gotta go. Keep me updated on your love affair!"  

"It's not a love affair, Jesus," Dean says, but she's already hung up the phone.

* 

 

Dean is off the phone for about thirty seconds before it occurs to him that he hasn’t Facebook stalked Castiel yet, in this, the  _ 21st century, asshole.  _ He barely has time to process the thought before he pulls up the app on his phone. 

It's not difficult to find. He pulls up the UNC class of 2018 Facebook page and searches for "Castiel" in it, and it's not exactly a common name. The profile is almost entirely blank, and he only has fifty-two Facebook friends. Even Dean, after cutting off everyone he knew in high school, has a couple hundred.   

Dean wonders if he's lonely. If that's why he was so quick to jump on the prospect of rooming with Sam and Dean—because he doesn't have anyone else. Maybe the way he's treating Dean is how he'd treat anyone, given enough time and attention.

Dean really doesn't want to be the kind of person that resents that.  

There's only so much to be gleaned from a blank profile, and Dean flops back onto his bed. He doesn't have another shift at the hospital until Thursday, and with no classes to fill his time, he has nothing to do but agonize over this.  

As though in direct response to his restlessness, his phone vibrates insistently. He tries not to hate himself for how quickly he snatches it up.  

 

_ From: Castiel Milton _

_ Sent: 12:34PM _

_ Hello, Dean. I apologize, but I am afraid I must postpone my move-in until further notice. A pressing family matter has come up. However, I do not anticipate this delay taking more than a day or two. I will keep you abreast. Sincerely, Castiel Milton  _

Dean snorts reflexively—he hasn’t known Cas for long, but him composing text messages that read like business memos feels  _ very  _ in character _ — _ but beneath the amusement is a creeping disappointment that he cuts off before he has to think about it further than that.

 

_ From: Dean Winchester  _

_ To: Castiel Milton _

_ Sent: 12:36PM _

_ heh heh. breast. =P _

 

Castiel responds immediately,  _ wow ur so mature, it's a good thing ur eyes are so pretty ;],  _ and Dean just about chokes on his own lungs, but a second message appears almost as quickly as the first: 

 

_ From: Castiel Milton _

_ Sent: 12:38PM _

_ I apologize. That was my brother, Gabriel. He can be...difficult.  _

 

_ From: Dean Winchester _

_ To: Castiel Milton _

_ Sent: 12:40PM _

_ does he do yoga? and/or drink health shakes? I would kill for sammy to do something natural like steal my phone once in a while _

 

_ From: Castiel Milton _

_ Sent: 12:42PM _

_ I asked him, and now he is in tears from laughter. Apparently, you are hilarious.  _

 

Dean smiles at his phone and types out,  _ I won't let it go to my head, lol,  _ and then, after a moment of thought,  _ see ya around, cas. hope your family is okay.  _

 

_ From: Castiel Milton _

_ Sent: 12:47PM _

_ Thank you, Dean. I look forward to seeing you soon.  _

 

That last text message is almost but not quite enough to alleviate the heavy feeling in Dean's chest, and he tries to make himself focus on it, but instead his brain is shouting _there's no urgent family matter, no one_ texts _during something like that,_ _he's just having second thoughts about moving in,_ and before he can stop it he's trapped himself in a tightening gyre of self-doubt, chest tight with anxiety.  

_ Why does you care so goddamn much?  _ He screams at his brain. The trouble is, he  _ knows  _ why. Cas made him feel more understood in half an hour than anyone else has in years, and that  _ matters  _ to him. He thought maybe Cas felt the same thing, based on all the smiling he did ( _ and God _ , Dean thinks,  _ what a smile he fucking has _ ), but maybe Dean was just projecting. Maybe he's gotten this all wrong. Maybe...

Like always when this happens, when Dean gets this clawing feeling behind his sternum, he thinks of his dad. Don't fucking psychoanalyze it, but he thinks of his dad.  

Dean remembers a different John, before—the John who took him fishing that time, who told him bedtime stories whispered quiet and conspiratorial next to a sleeping baby Sammy. When Mary died, she took some of John with him, and doesn't that just hit like a punch in the gut every time.  

(Dean remembers Mary too, of course—you remember his thoughts on hospitals. Dean remembers white nightgowns and apple pie, a soft voice singing him back to sleep after nightmares, showing him how to tie Sammy's tiny baby shoes. Mary used to buy them matching outfits when Sam was a baby, and Dean grumbled about it until she said to him, eyes sparkling,  _ he already wants to be just like his big sister,  _ and yeah, okay, that's its own fucking can of worms, that his fucking mother  _ Mommymommynoplease, Daddy why is Mommy gone  _ died thinking that she had one son and one  _ daughter _ , Dean's not fucking talking about that right now.)  

Before Mary died, John made pancakes on Sunday mornings. Chocolate chip, shaped like Mickey Mouse ears. Afterward, Sam and Dean were lucky to see him three times a week. It was Dean who packed Sam's lunches, Dean who helped him with his homework (Ellen who picked them up and drove them to her place, gave them a good hot meal and let them stay over more often than not).  

Dean doesn't exist in a vacuum, okay? He knows that most people who knew John think that he had some kind of psychotic break, that it led to his death, somehow.  

The thing is that John never acted quite the same after Mary died, threw himself into his research like never before—strange veins of his research, more precisely, that almost cost him his highly-anticipated tenure more than once.  

_ Every country in the world has a vampire story, Dean-o _ , he told Dean once while Sam was at soccer practice, eyes glinting feverishly at Dean from across the table.  _ Don't you think that's odd? I think I'm really on to something here, kiddo.  _

_ I guess so,  _ Dean mumbled that way kids do when they're 15—because, like, come on John, Dean was fucking 15, he had a geometry test the next day, he didn't give a fuck about your latest goddamn research interest—and John had pushed the food around his plate a little longer before rabbiting off to his study again.  

Because yeah, there's another reason Dean tries to avoid saying his full name within earshot of anyone who might know anything about John Winchester: it means willfully associating himself with a professor of theology who plunged off the deep end headfirst. He used to be  _ proud  _ of it, is the thing, showed off his Dad and his research on every single Father's Day assignment in elementary school. Kids got less forgiving as time went on.  _ Buffy,  _ they used to call Dean behind his back in high school,  _ hahahaha _ —Buffy as in the Vampire Slayer. As in crackpot Professor Winchester's kid. Now that Dean thinks about it, he doesn't know if Sam ever got a nickname like that. He's never asked.  

In college, of course, no one cares about that kind of bullshit. Never did. They whisper about Dean for different reasons:  _ that's Dean, you know. That professor's kid—you know John Winchester? Yeah, the one who died,  _ usually followed by something like  _ oh my God yeah, my friend's sister's cousin took Religion 101 with him, that is  _ so  _ sad,  _ et cetera, et cetera.  

It's just that Dean wishes he would have listened more.  

After John died, Dean was obsessed with listening to the last cassette he left in the Impala—a mediocre Steppenwolf album, Dean remembers. He listened to it over and over and over, memorizing every word, trying to derive some meaning from it being the last one John ever played.  

When Mary was alive, she used to give John feedback on the articles he submitted to scholarly journals, proofreading them and scrawling her own thoughts on whatever the subject was in the margins. The last thing Mary did before she died was give John feedback on one last journal article—coincidentally, which is code here for  _ really fucking uncoincidentally,  _ that article was on the topic of universal myths, the topic that John would later dedicate his life to. Universal myths, of course, are legends that crop up in one form or another in every area in the world. Like dragons, John posited in his article. Like vampires.

He doesn't think his dad was crazy. He thinks he was coping. 

*

"You look like shit," Sam says as soon as he walks in. To be fair, Dean is a lump of junk food wrappers and blankets on the L-shaped couch, blanket-burritoed legs stretched in front of him, the blaring television (Food Network, Dean's first and only love) the only light source in the room, but still, Dean huffs indignantly.  

"We can't all be hyper-productive all the time," he grumbles.  

"Where's Cas?" Sam hangs his keys up on the key hanger—Christ, when did they get a  _ key hanger _ ?—and Dean gets that tight feeling in his chest again.

"Oh, yeah," Dean says, going for casual. He makes eye contact with Gordon Ramsay on the television, who is currently yelling at a guy who dropped his freshly-plated shrimp alfredo, because at this particular moment he seems a lot less threatening than Sam and his  _ soulful eyes  _ or whatever the fuck. "He had to postpone. Something came up. He'll be moved in in a day or two."  

"Rent's due in three, Dean," Sam says, not unkindly, but Dean flinches anyway.  

"I know, Sammy," he murmurs, and he must sound as tired and beaten down as he feels, because Sam switches on the lamp and turns off the TV, sinking down beside Dean on the couch.   

"You doing okay?" He says it so fucking softly, and shit, you know?

The worst part is that Dean still finds himself with a joke on the tip of his tongue, _ no chick flick moments, Sammy,  _ but it was Sam who the summer after graduating high school ( _ last summer _ , Dean's mind painfully supplies) had to bring clothes to Dean in the inpatient program he was in for a suicide attempt (a hard night, a handle of liquor, a bottle of pills). It was Sam who had to measure out Dean's antidepressants for him once he got out, Sam who suggested they live together for what was going to be his first year of college, Dean's senior year, even though first years are supposed to live in the dorms--they were granted an exception for  _medical circumstances._ Sam who probably compromised on going to any college in the goddamn world and settled for going to UNC, in the same dusty corner of the world they grew up in. That's the funny part,  _ hahahaha _ , about the fact that Dean's even thinking about lying to him: Sam has already seen him at his worst.  

Hahahaha.  

Dean shakes it off, mumbles, "It was a depression day, but I'm fine," and Sam nods, because they've been doing this for a while now, and against all odds Dean has gotten pretty good at telling the difference between what he can and can't handle.  

"Anything trigger it?"

Fuck. Dean's brother  _ knows  _ him. That's the weirdest part. Before their Dad died, before Dean tried to off himself, they had so little in common. Dean practically  _ raised  _ the kid, but that doesn't mean that Sam didn't prefer boy scouts and soccer practice over Dean's Dungeons and Dragons groups and sexual escapades. But then John bit it, and well. What more can you have in common with someone than that? They're fucking  _ orphans _ .

"Yeah," he says finally, and then against his better judgement, "I was kinda thinking about Dad."  

Sam sighs, long and sad. This is a whole  _ thing  _ with them.

“Dean, I know you’re still struggling with this--”

“I’m not, okay?” Dean says, immediately and defensively, because he can’t help it. “I know he’s dead. It’s not what you think.”

“Then what is it?”

This is far from the first time they’ve had this conversation, but Sam looks no less earnest every time, like he genuinely wants to understand. Dean guesses that’s why he keeps trying.

“It’s just…” He lets his eyes slip closed, leaning his head back against the back of the couch. “I know you all think Dad was crazy. And I get it. I do. The dude clearly had some issues. But I just…”

“Just what, Dean?”

_ Nice try, Sammy, _ Dean thinks, because he was at their joint session with Dr. Cartwright, the one where they talked about  _ active listening  _ and  _ good support systems,  _ but he guesses it’s working because he still finds himself saying “Just  _ everything,  _ Sam, fucking everybody.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, so he forges on. “Just fucking...you all assume he was a crackpot, but aren’t even just a little bit curious about what had him so convinced? About why he got so hooked on that idea? It’s like no one even thinks about him as human, you know? He’s just crazy Dr. Winchester, that professor who died tragically or whatever the fuck, and like...no one’s drinking beers, talking about his life. No one’s here to fucking miss him except me, because even you, Sammy, even you have moved on so fucking effectively, and I’m happy for you, but you didn’t know him before, before Mom. Back when he was just...John, father of two. Fuck. I don’t know.”

Sam’s quiet for a minute. “You feel...alone in this.”

“Yeah,” Dean sighs, rubbing his temples. He has a goddamn headache.

“Look, man,” Sam starts, and Dean looks up. “I don’t harp on you moving on because I think he was crazy. I just…” He shrugs, and suddenly he’s the one looking exhausted. Dean is suddenly and acutely aware that this is his baby brother sitting here. “I think your life would be better if you could. That’s all.”

Dean doesn’t drink anymore, but he really, really wants a beer. “Well, Sammy,” he says, “we can at least agree on that.”

*

 

Later that night, Dean can’t sleep. He rolls over, quietly pulls open his bedside drawer to keep it from squeaking (and fuck if he doesn’t smile a little to himself at the habit--what, he’s going to wake up baby Sammy? That’s not exactly a concern anymore) and pushes aside the bed of crumpled tissues and used spiral bound notebooks until he feels smooth leather under his palm. 

The book is objectively beautiful. Even Dean, self-proclaimed not-a-literature-guy, can admit that. The title is embossed on the dark brown cover in gold script:  _ The Writings of Samuel Colt.  _ Unlike most of John’s book collection, the pages are well-worn from use in addition to age. It feels good in Dean’s hands. Solid.  

Dean was the first to brave John’s study after he died. A lot of things, he put into boxes to deal with emotionally later--photo albums, journals, and the like. He got through both of John’s desk drawers and dropped something--a stapler, he thinksit was--and frowned when it landed with a hollow  _ thunk.  _ After some finagling, he managed to find a latch underneath the lip of the desk, and when he pressed it, the false bottom of the drawer popped out.

His hands shook as he reached for it, expecting...he didn’t know what. And what he found was  _ The Writings of Samuel Colt. _

He didn’t know what to make of it at first. Didn’t touch it for months. By the time he finally cracked it open, he was almost disappointed to find that it was high-concept vampire fantasy--not surprised, given John’s line of research, but disappointed. Still, he felt compelled to keep the book a secret, reading it in snatches after Sammy had gone to bed, the yellowed pages comforting and familiar beneath the buttery yellow of his bedside lamp.

It only took him a couple of weeks to get through it, that first time. Now, he goes back to it on nights like these, tries to curl up and hide in the words and understand why John cared about it so much.

Tonight, his fucking stomach aches with the weight of the day, so he starts on page one. 

 

_ In the beginning, there were three. _

_ The greeks called her, the first her, Empusa. They believed her to be the offspring of Hecate, and housewives whispered her cautionary tales to their husbands once their children went to sleep. For Empusa, they warned, was a seductress, and once even the most steadfast of men had fallen into her grip, they would not be free of it until she had consumed them entirely. The second being, they knew by his sons--the striges, the bird-creatures, sinister in intent and biding their time to snatch children from their beds. The third and final being, they knew as Lamia. A secret lover of Zeus, they said. When Hera discovered Zeus’s adultery, she slaughtered the children of Lamia, swiftly and without remorse. As retribution, Lamia, too, took to stealing children and drinking their blood to sustain herself. The blood of babies, according to Lamia, was the sweetest of all. _

_ They were wrong, of course, if only in name, and in some of the details. These things do become muddy with the passage of time, and humans do prefer a story they can understand. _

_ Here is the real story: the first she was called Lamashtu, the second being Gallu, and the third, Lilitu. Humans don’t know the truth of them and never have, but if you are holding this book, you are about to. _

_ This story, like most good stories, begins with love. _

*

He runs into Sam just as he’s heading out to campus, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He swears sometimes that Sam is part golden retriever. It’s way too cold out for him to be so goddamn chipper. 

“You win the lottery or something?”

“I ran into Cas!” Sam says instead, and yeah, okay, Dean’s stomach flutters at that, fuck you very much. He’s been texting Cas on and off, and has learned that what he previously thought was a stick up Cas’s ass gives way to a dry sense of humor that has left Dean grinning down at his phone more than is strictly necessary.

“Oh?” He wonders if he’s convincingly blase. Sam’s expression would suggest not.

“Yeah! I was at the grocery store, and--”

“Again?” Dean can’t help but interject. He just went on Tuesday, stocking up on veggies and yogurt but conveniently “forgetting” Dean’s soda.

“I forgot  _ kale _ , Dean,” Sam says defensively, and Dean rolls his eyes. “And yes, I got your cancer juice, too.”

“Good. Continue.”

“We just bumped into each other! Anyway, he says he’s just picking up some extra moving boxes and that he’ll be moving in today!”

Sam’s excitement is contagious. At least, that’s what Dean  _ tells  _ himself is the reason for the stupid grin on his face.

“I really should be here to help him out…” Dean hedges, weighing his options. “I think I have, like, one more excused absence.”

"No,” Sam says authoritatively. “Go to class. You can help him when you get back.” The way he says  _ help  _ is downright  _ knowing _ . He might as well be waggling his eyebrows. Dean scowls.

“Fine, grandma,” he grouses, and lets the door swing shut behind him as he goes.

 

Somehow-- _ because you were too busy with all the pining,  _ he can practically hear Jo goading him--Dean managed to forget about the shitshow that is BIOL 252.

It’s developmental biology, the second-to-last class required for Dean to complete his biology major. Because God hates him, it is also the last class Alistair needs to complete his biology  _ minor.  _ And of course--of  _ fucking  _ course--the lab groups are done alphabetically. Alistair’s last name is Whitlock.

Dean does not like Wednesdays.

He especially does not like  _ this  _ particular Wednesday. He forgot to pee before he left--he blames Sammy, god damn him--and spends half the lecture crossing and uncrossing his legs, too terrified of missing notes to excuse himself. When the professor dismisses them (after five minutes of students asking questions about scantrons and exam rooms and, _God_ Dean hates college), he all but leaps over the rows of chairs between him and the exit, laptop case slung haphazardly over his shoulder.

He doesn’t remember until he gets inside that this is one of the men’s bathrooms on campus that doesn’t have any stalls, only urinals.

He realizes this at the same time that makes eye contact with Alistair Whitlock.

“Dean,” Alistair says, sickly-sweet, and Dean feels his stomach turning in revulsion and something akin to fear. Despite being assigned to the same lab group, this class is perilously overfilled, and he has managed to scrape through this semester with minimal interaction with Alistair, only ever related to their lab assignments and always with the buffer of their lab partners.

“Alistair,” he manages, eyes darting toward the sinks. There’s no one else here. Fucking perfect. “Uh, hair check. Nice seeing you again.”

One second, Dean is whirling for the door. The next, Alistair is kicking out swiftly enough to take him by surprise, sweeping his feet out from under him. He lands on his ass, the impact jolting up his spine.

“What have I told you,” Alistair says, and God, Dean can smell that sour breath from here, “about using the wrong restroom?”

Fuck.  _ Fuck. _

The thing about Alistair is that it didn’t end with the locker room, with Jo punching him in the face.

(The thing about Alistair is that Dean learned very quickly that telling anyone didn’t do him any good, and there wasn’t always someone else around.)

(He fought back the first time, desperately trying to cry out around the socks Alistair stuffed in his mouth.) 

(The thing about Alistair is that Dean  _ responded  _ to it, to Alistair’s probing fingers. After a while, Dean thinks part of him even liked it.) 

( _ Rape,  _ Dr. Cartwright has thrown around, but is that the word for it? It became Dean’s new normal, under bleachers and when no one was in the locker room, whenever Alistair could find him alone.) 

(He fought back the first time and told John the gash across his eyebrow happened playing softball.) 

(He never fought back again.) 

Dean slams back into his body as Alistair pulls him up by the collar of his shirt, smoothing it back down again tenderly, lovingly. Dean wants to vomit, but he feels rooted where he stands. Anyway, Alistair reaches behind him to turn the lock on the bathroom door, so where’s he going to go? 

He leans in close to Dean’s ear, practically resting his head on his shoulder. “I’ve missed you, Dean. Have you missed me?”

Of all the things Dean could be thinking about right now, he thinks of Castiel. Cas. His yellow sweater, those ever-present glasses ( _ they’re for light sensitivity,  _ Cas told him in one of their text conversations, so mystery solved, there), the awe on his face around the old books, the easy familiarity that has bloomed between them in a matter of days, a dozen jokes traded back and forth via text message. Those blinding fucking smiles. How  _ excited  _ Dean feels, that he’ll go back to his apartment and Cas will be there. Cas’s  _ stuff  _ will be there. 

Sam was going to make eggplant parmesan for dinner.

Dean is thinking about Cas, and he’s squeezing his eyes shut hard against tears.

“I said,” Alistair says, hand closing tightly over Dean’s shoulder, “have you  _ missed  _ me?”

Dean just barely stifles a whimper. He can feel the bones of his shoulder grinding together, but whimpering, screaming--none of it stops Alistair. It only ever made it worse.

Dean thinks of Cas, of Jo. God, of Sammy, even. He clears his throat.

“Not particularly, no.”

Alistair pulls back, grinning a grin that reminds Dean more of a shark showing its teeth. “Do you have a defiant streak now, Deanna?”

Dean grits his teeth. His chest is starting to ache from the binder on his chest and the shallow breaths he’s taking. “Just a lower tolerance for bullshit, I guess. I’ve been trying to cut back.”

Alistair gives a throaty laugh, and that’s all the warning Dean gets before he’s shoved roughly back down to the floor, a few swift kicks to the ribs leaving him gasping.

Alistair learned a long time ago that to stop Dean, you go straight for the lungs.

“It seems you’ve forgotten what I taught you,” Alistair says, softly. “I’m disappointed, pet.” He leans down to tuck a stray piece of hair behind Dean’s ear. Dean's breath catches. “No matter. I’m so glad to see you again. Everyone deserves a second chance. If you’re lucky--nay, if you’re _good_ \-- I’ll do that _thing_ you liked so much. Remember that?”

Heat pools in Dean’s belly, and that, of all things, is what makes the tears he’s been gritting his teeth against spill over. He’s gone his whole fucking college career without landing himself alone in a room with Alistair Whitlock, and now, in the first semester of his senior year, he’s on a bathroom floor again. There is something especially cruel about the fact that it is happening not long after he remembered Jo punching him in the face, as though Dean thinking about it brought this to fruition. But Dean isn’t a high schooler anymore. He raises his chin defiantly, spitting blood.

“I remember you screaming like a bitch when Jo punched you.”

He has enough time to see Alistair’s face crumble in fury before the blows start.

He doesn’t even have time to defend himself, save raising his hands in a weak attempt at protecting his face. Alistair’s heavy boots are everywhere--his stomach, his chest. A glancing blow to his cheek. By the time it ends, Dean is heaving over the floor, stomach contracting emptily, ears ringing.

“Easy, easy,” Alistair shushes, hands gentle on his back, now. “Hey. You’re okay. I know exactly how much you can handle.”

God, Dean feels sick.

“I think,” Alistair says then, straightening up, “that we can push you a little further, though. What do you say?”

Dean’s eyes are sliding shut without his consent, and he clings to consciousness desperately. Alistair’s face is going in and out of focus, voice coming from somewhere very far away. He  _ cannot  _ fucking pass out right now. Distantly, he registers something warm in his hand, and then his arm drops limply to the floor again. He barely feels the pain of it hitting the linoleum.

“Ah. Yeah, I guess you can’t say much of anything right now, hm?” Alistair laughs like nails on a chalkboard, harsh and biting. “It’s okay. I have an offer you can’t refuse.”

He yanks Dean’s head up to look at his phone, and Dean’s stomach sinks. His vision is blurry, but the photo Alistair is showing is undeniably Dean’s hand on Alistair’s dick--the warmth he felt earlier, he realizes, and his stomach does a lazy, revolted barrel roll. Just slightly out of focus is Dean’s wallet, open on the floor where he dropped it, and you can faintly make out his name and face on his student ID.

“I never thought my photography course would do anything for me, but college is all about learning opportunities.” Alistair tucks his phone into his back pocket. “So the way I see it, you have two choices. Resume your...ah,  _ lessons  _ with me--hear that? Stop fucking  _ avoiding  _ me--or I can take this to the Office of the Dean of Students. I was assaulted in the bathroom...just barely managed to take a photo...I was able to fight him off, and your wounds will prove it. A picture’s worth a thousand words.”

Tears pour down Dean’s face, mixing with blood to form a pink puddle where his cheek is pressed against the linoleum floor.

“I didn’t think I’d have this opportunity...not for a while, at least,” Alistair says, breath hot on Dean’s face. “But I’m so glad I did. I’ll give you time to decide, obviously. I’m not a monster.”

All Dean can register before he realizes what’s happening is blinding pain, something clamping on his lungs like a vice. Alistair deposits him unceremoniously in the corner of the bathroom, out of immediate view of the door. Dean’s chest sinks. No one comes to this bathroom anyway--no one except Alistair, apparently, and isn’t that just Dean’s luck.

“Be a good pet and stay here until you can walk on your big girl legs again, okay?” Dean’s vision is starting to grey out. “Just think about what a sex scandal would do to Sammy and his reputation. I know you don’t care very much about your own.”

And just like that, Alistair slinks away, slinging Dean’s backpack toward him. It hits Dean’s chest, and for the first time, he lets out a pained whimper. Alistair huffs a little laugh, and then he’s gone, stopping the door from the outside to re-engage the lock before letting it close. Dean doesn’t know how long he lays there, tears pouring down his face, the world on a slow, dizzy tilt. He can’t tell how badly he’s hurt, can’t tell if he could walk even if he wanted to. Most concerningly, his breath is turning to wheezes, and he cannot imagine mustering the fine motor skills it would take to fish his inhaler out of his backpack, let alone take a hit of it.

Fuck. He has to call someone. 

He clumsily reaches into his pocket, each motion greying out his vision a little more. The pain is something he can only describe as _burning._ He doesn’t think anything’s broken, but his hands are slick with blood, body aching like a giant bruise--like a giant muscle tear. He feels ripped right in two. His vision is too blurred to make out his phone screen, but it unlocks at the touch of his thumbprint. Beggars can’t be choosers, he guesses, breaths rattling in and out more and more unsteadily with each exhale, but his phone is blessedly already open on his contacts list. He presses desperately, hoping he lands on Sam--he doesn’t have that many contacts, most of them family. His hand shakes so hard that he almost drops the phone.

He picks up almost immediately. “Dean?”

Dean releases a sob that he didn’t know he was holding, breath hitching. He hurts so fucking bad.

“Dean? Dean! What’s going on?”

It’s Cas. Of course it’s Cas. Dean’s luck. All the red he's been seeing behind his eyelids turns to warm, sunshine yellow.

“Cas,” he slurs, tongue feeling clumsy and too-big in his mouth, lips swollen from Alistair’s boot. “Cas, ‘m hurt. ‘M hurt bad.”

“Hurt?” Dean hears something clatter on the other end of the phone, something like glass breaking. Despite it all, he feels a tiny, weakened flutter in his chest--Cas is probably in the middle of moving in, and Dean is ridiculously, impossibly excited about that, even though it feels like his chest is collapsing.  “Dean, you’re wheezing.”

“Can’t get m’inhaler,” he mumbles, and chokes on another sob. “Can you hel’me?”

“Dean,” Castiel says again, sounding pained. “I need you to tell me where you are. Can you do that?”

Dean mumbles out something that he hopes is coherent enough for Cas to make out, his vision whiting out.

“Stay on the line with me, Dean.”

Dean groans, the pain literally blinding. He thinks maybe he dropped the phone. Castiel’s voice sounds tinny and very far away. “M’sorry,” he manages.

“For what?” Castiel asks. Dean thinks he hears the car starting, but maybe it’s wishful thinking.

“The door’s locked,” Dean sobs out then, remembering. “‘M stuck.”

“It’s going to be okay. I promise.” Castiel’s voice is low and serious. “I’m on my way. Stay awake for me, Dean.”

Dean’s already fading, and no, he must not have dropped the phone before, because he definitely does now, feels it slip through his blood-slick hands and hears it clatter on the linoleum.

“Dean? Are you alright? Dean, answer me!” Cas’s voice, distant and quiet, now, sounds tight and frantic.

“‘M sorry,” Dean mumbles again, and then he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -yes, Alistair is going to get what's coming to him   
> -Alistair is spelled "Alastair" in canon apparently? but like. that's stupid as hell so no  
> -idk how long im going to keep writing at this pace, so i'm thinking about weekly updates rather than sporadic whenever-i-post-them updates...thoughts? concerns? do i even have enough readers for anyone 2 care? lmk


	4. Chapter 4

**2007**  

John Winchester has never been good at mourning, he thinks as he steps out of the Impala, the creaking door loud in the relative quiet of the night. But Ellen is wrong about this one. He knows she is.  

John knows what he saw.  

It's been two years now, almost to the day, and he still remembers the way Mary's eyes stared unseeingly at the ceiling, face wan and lips bloodless. She looked oddly calm, he reflects now, like she fell asleep with her eyes open. He remembers crashing to his knees at her side, gripping her arm desperately, remembers the feeling of the rigid muscles stiff under his palm, no trace of warmth coming from her at all. He's not a doctor, but it was too early for rigor mortis—he heard the scream, and in the time it took him to come in from the garage, to sprint up the stairs tripping over himself with terror, she was on the floor.  

The only color left on her at all was the deep purple of the two small, purple bruises, perfectly circular and evenly spaced, marring the smooth, pale flesh of her neck. John can't ever forget it, doesn't think he ever will until the day he dies.  

And in the time it took for him to grab the children, to settle them on the sidewalk outside and dial 911, the second floor of their house was engulfed in flame, an anomaly firefighters would attribute to faulty wiring, to something absolutely ordinary, and he doesn't buy it for a second.  

He wept when Ellen told him the cause of death— _it was smoke inhalation, John, and it's as simple as that, and I am so sorry_ —but he did not believe it. Not once did he believe it.  

John knows how he looks to other people—to his colleagues, to Ellen herself, to  _Bobby_ , with his gruff concern and his trucker cap pulled low over his eyebrows. He isn't a superstitious man, isn't even a particularly religious one, his field of study be damned. He likes theology for its relationship to human nature, for its ties to folklore and ethnography: the most telling thing about a person is what they believe.  

John doesn't know what he believes, but he knows that he's been researching vampire stories since before Mary died.  

And he knows what he saw.  

His boots crunch on the gravel as he walks up the driveway to the double-wide, outfitted with a variety of signs, all bearing the same general message:  _keep out, or else. You aren't welcome here._  

John, not one to be intimidated, adjusts his leather satchel, which currently has some heft—a handle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, and a thick manila folder with everything John has so far. He exhales heavily, and before he can talk himself out of it, he rings the doorbell.  

John hears thumping footsteps, work boots on hardwood and then a beat of silence. After a moment, he hears the sound of a lock—of  _several_ locks—clicking, and the heavy wood door wrenches open a fraction, enough for him to see a cirrhosis-yellow eye peering out at him.  

"What?" 

John shifts his weight awkwardly, makes a placating hand gesture. "Hi. Are you, uh, Rufus Turner?"  

"Even if I am, the question is still the same.  _What_?"  

John stifles a grin. He's not sure Rufus would appreciate it very much. "I’m John Winchester. I'm a friend of Bobby Singer's."  

He can't be sure, but John thinks he sees the one eye he's looking at roll. "So?" 

"So...he told me you had some information for me."  

Rufus guffaws. "Did he now?"  

John fights the urge to rub at his temples. To be fair, Bobby did warn him about this, back at the police station.  

"He's a goddamn hermit, Winchester," Bobby said, taking a swig of his coffee. "He's not gonna wanna talk, fancy scotch or no fancy scotch. Is it really worth it?"  

"I'm trying to get a good number of local responses," John said, shrugging. He got a lot better at lying with a straight face after Mary died. "It's worth a try."  

"Your funeral," Bobby muttered, and that was that.  

See, as far as Bobby knows, and as far as the university knows, John is conducting an ethnographic study of vampire folklore in the southern United States. He supposes he is, in a way—after all, this, this goddamn rabbit hole he's gone down, all started with legitimate academic research. He brought it up casually to Bobby, musing aloud as to how much useful data he would actually find— _after all_ , he chuckled darkly,  _who in this day and age believes in vampires?_ Bobby laughed in response, managing a gruff "you'd be surprised. Got a guy who we pick up all the time for mail fraud and the like. A real nutjob, pretty paranoid. Caught him a few times tampering with security footage. Garlic. Stakes. The whole nine." And at that, John's ears perked up. But like John said—this all started with legitimate research. His...extracurricular interest is neither here nor there.  

This is what he tells himself, at least, dropping $200 of his research stipend on the handle of Johnnie. It's awfully high-end scotch for a man who looks like he is quite possibly an alcoholic.  

"He did," he finally says to Rufus. "But he doesn't know why I'm really here."  

Rufus raises the one eyebrow John can see, and he reads the unspoken statement fairly easily:  _elaborate._  

"My wife was killed two years ago," John says after a second of deliberation, deciding honesty is the only way he's going to get through to this man. "There was a fire, and her death certificate says smoke inhalation. But the thing is, I saw her  _before_ the fire. Stiff as a board. White, and I mean  _sheet_ white. Looked like she had no blood left. Two puncture marks on her neck."  

Rufus blinks once, then twice, and then: "Get the hell off my property."  

John steels himself. "I understand, sir. I'll head out. I just have one more question for you, though." He pulls out the Johnnie Walker, holding it up to the door. "See, I got this bottle of scotch, but I'm not much of a scotch drinker myself. Is this considered good?"  

There are a couple of tense beats of silence, Rufus's exposed eye never leaving the bottle in John's hand. A moment later, the final latch unclicks, and Rufus opens the door to let John in.  

"Wipe your damn boots before you come in."  

* 

Rufus is a lot more genial after a few glasses of scotch, which isn't saying much, but it's still something for John to work with.  

"Let's cut the bullshit," Rufus says after drinking in silence for some time. "What are you actually here for? What does  _Bobby_ think you're here for?"  

John takes a long pull of scotch, carefully putting down the glass before he speaks. "Long or short version?"  

"Short. I still don't wanna help you."  

John snorts. "Uh, fair enough. Bobby thinks I'm here for an ethnographic survey on vampire traditions."  

Rufus does not look impressed. John presses on. "But I'm actually here because. Uh."  

Rufus rolls his eyes. "Spit it out, Jesus."  

"Do you believe in vampires?" John asks without meaning to, but it's out and on the table now, so he peers up at Rufus, eyes narrowing.  

Rufus sighs deeply, and John might be imagining it, but he thinks he's letting his guard down a little.  

"I don't know left from right most of the time these days," Rufus says, "but I believe in something."  

John can't think of a damn thing to say, so he looks studiously down at his mostly-empty glass of scotch, waiting for Rufus to continue.  

"Look," Rufus says finally, "I'm not here to spill my guts to you. I'll just say we all get roped into this somehow, and you do with that what you want. But yeah, Winchester, I believe in vampires." His voice sharpens. "The real question is why are you  _asking_ me."  

Something ugly is in John's chest, a writhing, deep-down fear, a sense of wrongness. "I'm an academic," he says. "I'm not religious. I study theology. I know too damn much about it to be religious. I'm not even superstitious."  

"But your wife didn’t die in no fire," Rufus says.  

"Exactly."  

"That begs the question," Rufus says, and pours himself another scotch, "what the hell do you want  _me_ to do about it?"  

This is the hard sell. John lets his eyes close for a moment before he speaks. "I don't know where to start, Rufus. I want revenge. I want to watch the life go out of the bastard that killed my wife. But I want  _information_. If this is real..." 

"Boy," Rufus says, "would you be here if you didn't believe it's real? And you're still talking around the point. What exactly do you want from  _me?"_  

Here goes nothing. "I want information, Rufus. As much as you have. Anything. Everything." He takes a breath. "And I want to know how to kill a vampire."  

Rufus sits on the edge of his rickety kitchen table. "You don't know what you're asking for. If you're smart you'll turn tail and run. You don't want this life. I've been  _getting information_ my whole damn life, and all I've got to show for it is a couple of arrest warrants and liver failure." 

John hardens his gaze. "I know what I'm asking for." 

Rufus sighs.  

"If I'm really not going to be able to talk you out of this," he says, "it's gonna take me a while."  

* 

In the end, John leaves with a file— _every damn vampire around here that_ _I know about,_  Rufus told him,  _and every damn vampire hunter._   

Vampire hunters, John has learned, are not so much hunters as...protectors. Rufus impressed this on him several times:  _if you're going out looking for one, you're almost guaranteed to get your ass killed. Even hunters don't initiate contact. They just try like hell not to die and to not let other sons of bitches die when the bloodsuckers come around._   

Rufus also handed him a book— _The Writings of Samuel Colt--_ its spine cracked from lack of maintenance, its cover obscured by a thin layer of dust, but it looked like it was valuable.  

John's brow furrowed, and Rufus made a face-- _go on, then,_ it seemed to say--so John cracked it open right there and read an excerpt: 

 _In the beginning, we are taught, God created the heavens and the earth. To oversee this creation, he made Adam, then Eve_ _._  

 _Like many of the stories in that Holy Book, this is not, in fact, the truth._  

 _In the beginning was accretion from the solar nebula, was the ocean and the atmosphere, void of oxygen_ _. For many years, the Earth was on_ _fire, its surface puckered by volcanoes, more molten lava than_ _anything else_ _, and in those_ _fires_ _was_ _Lamashtu_ _, more void than form. Later, they would write stories about her: "_ _Wherever she comes, wherever she appears, she brings evil and destruction. Men, beasts, trees, rivers, roads, buildings, she brings harm to them all. A flesh-eating, bloodsucking monster is she."_ _Later, she would whisper her own origin story into existence so seamlessly that the humans would think that it had been their own idea, a story of a holy lineage, of being_ _descended_ _from the gods. But for now, she festered._  

 _In the_ _beginning, the Earth began to cool, and as the lava hardened, the fires begin to extinguish. Oceans formed at the same time as the moon, the product of a mighty collision with something as big as a planet, called_ _Theia,_ _that shook the Earth to her firmaments. In those depths lay_ _Gallu_ _, whose sons and daughters would go forth and multiply, would have strange magic and take many forms._ _The striges_ _, the Greeks would call them, and would believe_ _them to be heralds of ill fortune. Perhaps as divine retribution for_ _their_ _magic,_ _Gallu_ _and his offspring would be cursed with eternal hunger and thirst, bloodlust that consumed them entirely. But for now, he waited, still as the grave._  

 _In the beginning, after God said_ _let there be abiogenesis,_ _after eukaryotes and continents were formed, after the Cambrian explosion, God created Adam_ _(_ _meaning "_ _man"_ _)_ _and_ _Lilitu_ _(meaning_ _"_ _of the night"_ _)_ _from_ _the same soil. Adam_ _said,_ serve me, _and_ _Lilitu_ _refused. She did go forth and multiply--after all, that is what God had commanded of her and Adam--but when God came down to survey the fruits of her labor, to view his own creation and say_ yes, this is good,  _her offspring were the children of Death himself_ _. Later on, mothers would ward their children's cribs with talismans to keep her away. But for now, she bore children, an entire generation of something_ _different_ _, something_ _new_ _._ _Lilitu_ _, too, became something new, and it is then that_ _Lamashtu_ _and_ _Gallu_ _came to her._  

Welcome _,_ _they said,_ for we understand that you hunger, but it is not food you need, not anymore. It is blood.  

 _You see, it's really very simple: from these three A_ _ncient O_ _nes, we came. One species with three different but similar births._   

"I don't need a damn fairy tale," John muttered.  

"First of all, I just told you vampires are real, but _this_ is where you draw the line?" Rufus took a swig of scotch, properly drunk by now. "Second of all, you're going to want to take the book, John.  
 He flipped the book to the last section. John only had time to read the first sentence:  _There is only one way to kill a vampire._  

John nodded. "Okay."  

"That book is a curse," Rufus told him. "I'm glad to get rid of it. You're not long for this world, with what you're trying to do. Just leave me out of it."  

They parted with solemn nods of their heads, and now John is sitting in his study, skimming the file Rufus gave him. There aren't very many hunters left alive, it seems, and their ranks were fairly pathetic even including the names crossed out:  

 _Rufus Tuner_    
_Gordon Walker_     
~~_Asa Fox_~~ _(deceased)_    
~~_Annie Hawkins_~~ _(deceased)_    
~~_Jim Murphy_~~ _(deceased)_    
_Bucky Sims_    
_Roy [redacted]_    
_Walt [redacted]_  

He takes a long breath before turning to list of vampires. John pulls out his own folder, lays it open so that the photos are in clear view.  

John didn't tell the police—didn't tell  _Bobby,_ the closest thing he has to a friend and the goddamn chief of police—but he and Mary installed security cameras a few months before she died, something to help them keep an eye on the kids and any babysitters they hired ( _that's creepy, John,_ Mary chastised him, but went along with it anyway). It gave them a clear view of the rooms in the house, and a couple of exterior angles—the driveway, the backyard, near the front door.  

The cameras were scorched to all hell, of course. It took John weeks to extract footage, and even then it was blackened and warped, hours and hours in the archive lab at the university (that he explained away as  _brushing up on some local history, you know, for my ethnographic_ _research)_ to carve out something even approaching useful from the tapes. In the end, he managed to capture two almost-clear stills: one of a man standing at the door to the room Mary died in, and one just a pair of yellow eyes, staring dead at the camera. _Seven hundred dollars for security_ _cameras_ ,John thought bitterly,  _and this is all I could salvage._   

John breathes sharply through his nose, now, and turns to the vampire list. It's wrinkled and water-damaged, blurry Polaroid photographs paperclipped beside many of the names. There are some helpful statistics for each, including last known whereabouts, which John appreciates.    

The yellow eyes are the easiest to match up. There is only one name on the list whose accompanying photo has yellow eyes, milky, like bizarre cataracts:  _Azazel._ He stares at the photo for a long time, trying to match other still from the security tapes to a name on the list. There are a few that match the body type and facial structure— _Balthazar Milton_ and  _Samandriel Nox_ , he keeps on his shortlist, and after a moment of deliberation, he adds another.

_Castiel Milton._

John breathes heavy for a few minutes, fist clenching around the pen he's holding. Why not just kill them all? They're all complicit. But Rufus said it was damn near impossible to take on one vampire alone, let alone three. Before he can agonize over it any longer, he circles one of the names over and over, until the pen starts to press through the paper. He has to start somewhere. Has to start with some _one_.

He sits back in his desk chair, and opens the book Rufus gave him to the very last chapter. He has a lot of reading to do.  

* 

Two weeks later, John has torn through  _The Writings of Samuel Colt_ , has a pretty solid game plan for his first revenge killing. If all goes well, it won't be his last, and he spends his nights downing scotch and whiskey, poring over Mary's old photo albums--he understands more than ever why Rufus drank so damn much. It's as though the universe doesn't honor his drive, however—not two days after John finalizes his plan, he's crossing Rufus's name off the list of hunters.  _Deceased._  

 _Good old-fashioned liver failure_ , Bobby tells him with a hint of sadness. He doesn't know whether or not to believe him.  

John looks at the list for a moment, head tilted to the side, before he presses his pen to the paper and scrawls another name.  

_John_ _Winchester._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -another interlude! you can pretty much expect that between each "real" chapter there will be an interlude like this.  
> -the initial bit of dialogue between john & rufus in this chapter is derived from season 3, episode 15 ("time is on my side"); it is the initial conversation between dean and rufus. i thought it would be a fun homage to canon!  
> -i said that i was gonna think about an update schedule, but honestly i'm such a little kid that i'm having trouble keeping myself from posting them immediately, lol. any preferences?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *obligatory joke about how it's been a WHOLE YEAR since i last updated*   
> -sorry this took so long, bbs. it's a little longer than normal which i hope makes up for it!   
> -i'm working on a Thing for this fic, but it's not finished yet. i was hoping to post it with this update, but i figured y'all would prefer me posting this now to me waiting until i finished the Thing!   
> -beta'd by @thelyssymarie.   
> -this chapter features flashback/memory sequences. Dean is trans and didn't come out until his mother died, but I wanted to avoid misgendering him at all, even in the past. thus, even in the flashbacks, Dean is described using he/him pronouns. these are Cas's memories, after all - he knows present Dean, so when he thinks of these memories, it makes sense that he would think of him within that framework. i hope that makes sense!   
> -thank y'all for reading <3

**now**

Castiel is not as hopeless with cars as he led Dean to believe, but his vehicle is still not something he would have chosen for himself.  

It was a gift from Naomi, its extravagance probably some kind of power move.  _ I opted out of some of the more luxury options like the refrigerator and the adjustable lighting, _ he remembers her saying.  _ Too conspicuous.  _ And what a joke that has turned out to be, the idea that this vehicle is anything even approaching inconspicuous. Castiel made a point of memorizing everything he could about it when she gave it to him. It's a 2018 Mercedes G63 AMG—God knows how Naomi finessed herself a car not released to the general public yet—and while Castiel doesn't know what those letters mean, not really, he knows about his car.  

It is a seven-speed automatic with a 5.5 liter V8 gasoline engine. 544 horsepower at 5,000 revolutions per minute. It has a fuel tank capacity of 96 liters and is outfitted with electroluminescent bulletproof glass and leather interiors. It has an armor level of BR6, which as far as Castiel can understand means that it can withstand 7.62mm assault rifle fire and up to two DM51 hand grenade detonations at once.  

Castiel knows these things superficially, like trivia, knows the numbers and figures but not the full scope of their significance. He would be lying if he said he hasn't imagined asking Dean about them, watching his eyes light up as he explains, the way they did when he sat in the driver's seat of the Mercedes.  

That said, knowing these things allows him to understand just how recklessly he is driving when Dean stops talking over the phone—when all Castiel can hear is strained wheezing on the other end of the line. He pushes the needle of the speedometer ever-higher—160mph, 170, 180—the bulletproof glass shuddering in its frames, brakes squealing as he cuts corners.

He's glad he and Gabriel did a brief survey of the backroads when they first settled here.  

He parks in between two parking spaces, barely bothering to lock the car door behind him. Though he knows it is impossible, he feels as though he's pumping with adrenaline, skin hot and prickling, mouth flooding with coppery saliva. His blade is tucked into his sleeve, and heedless of who is watching, he breaks into a sprint.

The first bathroom he runs into is the wrong one, and he dimly registers the alarmed look on the face of the boy washing his hands at the sink before he's off again, mind a clanging alarm of  _ DeanDeanDean.  _ The only other bathroom is on the second floor. At least he knows where he is, now.  

 

No matter what Castiel was expecting, it wasn't this.  

Dean was right—Castiel has to break down the door, looking around furtively before he does so—and when he bursts in, muscles coiled tightly in preparation to attack, to defend, to do  _ something, _ he stops short, his blade slipping from his sleeve and clanging to the bathroom floor.  

The blood.  

_ "Dean,"  _ he whispers, pained, and runs to him.  

 

_ * _

**_1865_ **

Castiel remembered being turned, something that is rare but not completely unheard of. The pain of his human death has turned dull and hazy with the passage of time, but he can still remember the heat of it, the warmth of his blood slick on his palms. Sharper, more clearly, he remembers a different pain, abrupt and jarring, teeth slicing cleanly through the soft flesh of his neck. He remembers the peace that followed, a pleasant numbness that lulled him to sleep. At the time, he thought that this was the end, his death, but curiously, he was not afraid.  

He remembers waking up—ah, he thought, a pleasant surprise—and Balthazar looking at him with soft, sad eyes.  

"I'm alive?" Castiel murmured with new lips, gazing around curiously with new eyes.  

"I'm sorry," Balthazar told him. "I'm so sorry."  

Castiel remembers the war, remembers how at 19 he was drafted into a fight he wanted no part of, how Balthazar took him in,  _ just stick with me, mate _ , the two of them trading dirty jokes and swigs of whiskey from a flask. How Balthazar's face was the last thing he saw with his human eyes, face contorted with grief.  

"Sorry?" Castiel was still shaking off the dregs of his confusion, preoccupied by the burning in his throat. "For what?"  

"How do you feel?" Balthazar asked instead of answering.  

Castiel took stock, and all at once the memories hit him—the sound of musket fire, his shoulder feeling like it was going to tear from its socket. The blood. So much blood.  

Far too much.  

"Balthazar," Castiel said, more urgently. "I'm alive. _How_ am I alive?"  

Castiel remembers how Balthazar's entire body slumped, looking for all the world like a man beaten down. "You're not, exactly," he replied morosely. "I'm sorry, Castiel. We have a lot to discuss."  

Even then, Castiel thinks he knew: this was the beginning of a different kind of life.

_ * _

**now**

"Dean," Castiel says again, voice breaking, and crouches down in front him, reaching up to press two desperate fingers to his neck. Castiel breathes as little as possible—it's safer that way—and his eyes are burning with tears that he won't (can't) shed. 

And then, the impossible.

"Cas," Dean mumbles, his eyes slowly opening a fraction, glazed over and unfocused. "You're here."  

"Of course I'm here," Castiel says, moving his hand from Dean's neck to his face, cupping his cheek. "You're safe now. Where does it hurt?"

"Everywhere," Dean chokes out, breath catching on something like a sob. "M'chest."  

Castiel shushes him, hands moving down to prod gently at his chest. Dean lets out a pained cry when Castiel reaches his sixth rib, and Castiel exhales with relief—bruised, but not broken.  

"You're going to be okay," Castiel says, and turns to Dean's backpack. He knows from watching Dean that he keeps his inhaler in the first pocket. Castiel rummages around for it, his hands shaking, and then turns to Dean.  

"I need to get you breathing," he murmurs, voice soft. "And I have to get you sitting up. It's going to hurt, Dean."  

"'s okay, Cas," Dean says, starting to slur again. Cas is starting to worry about a concussion. "I trust you."  

Castiel's heart hasn't beat in years, but at Dean's words, he feels a twinge of pain where the dead organ sits.  

"Okay," Castiel says. "Okay."  

He puts a gentle hand on Dean's shoulder, wary of any tenderness, and eases him forward. Dean whimpers, and Castiel sits himself in the space behind Dean's back, helping him stay upright.  

"Okay," Castiel says again, as much for himself as for Dean. His throat aches. "I'll hold it for you. Just try to breathe."  

Dean moans a little, and sitting this close to him Castiel can feel the way Dean shudders convulsively, but he obeys, breathing out. Castiel presses down on the inhaler, and Dean sucks in, a little desperately.  

When they're done, Dean's breaths are still whistling, but he seems a little calmer, slumping against Castiel.  

"'m so tired," he manages.  

"Try to stay awake for me," Castiel says. "I have to get you to the hospital."  

"No," Dean replies, immediately and forcefully.  

Castiel blinks, startling a little. "No?"  

"Please no hospital," Dean says, voice softening. "Please. If nothing's broken..."

Castiel scrunches his eyes shut. This is ten kinds of wrong, ten kinds of illegal according to Council laws, but he knows he has the skill to clean Dean up, to treat his injuries. If he can just get them back to the apartment.  

"Okay," Castiel relents. "But Dean..."  

Dean's head lolls back onto Castiel's shoulder, a silent acknowledgement.  

"Dean, I need to know who did this to you."  

That's all it takes for Dean to jackknife up again, head toward his knees, clutching at his ribs. A sob claws out of him like something alive. Castiel's eyes widen, and he wraps his arms around Dean, burning in his throat worsening with the proximity.  

"I'm sorry," Castiel says. "I'm sorry. You're safe."  

"No," Dean says back, voice thick. "Not safe. Nothing's safe anymore."  

* 

**1865**

 

"We can't drink from animals," Castiel said, flatly. "It has to be human. That's what you're telling me?"   

Once the shock wore off, Castiel was forced to confront this, this life that belonged to him now, a life that was going to require him to make choices: who to kill. How to live. Murder, or starve.  

Balthazar's face softened.  

"There are ways, Cassie," he said gently. "You can drink without killing." He reached forward, placing a hand on Castiel's knee.  

"I'll teach you everything I know."  

_ * _

**now**

 

Castiel drives much more slowly back to the apartment, taking each curve as gently as he can. He tried to put Dean in the backseat, to let him stretch out and take the pressure off his ribs, but he got a frantic look in his eyes at the suggestion, shook his head as furiously as he could muster.  

He's driving Dean's car—"Baby," Dean mumbled deliriously as they exited the building, and Castiel might have blushed if he hadn't realized he was referring to the Impala. Dean has stretched out with his head on Castiel's lap, groaning every time he drives over a bump, and well.  

Castiel is having some feelings, here.  

"Dean," he says softly, reaching down from the steering wheel to smooth his hair back from his forehead, trying to be soothing. "Dean, I promise you're safe, but I need you to tell me what happened."  

Dean's breath hitches, and God if that doesn't just send a jolt of pain through Castiel's dead heart, but then he begins to speak.

The whole story is said and done in a couple of minutes. Castiel's teeth clench, muscles coiled with rage.  

"Alistair Whitlock, you said?" Castiel asks, keeping his voice soft and soothing.

"Mm-hmm," Dean manages brokenly.  

"I'm so sorry," Castiel murmurs, because he is, but behind his eyelids, he sees red.  

 

* 

**2002**

The first time Castiel saw Dean, it was a coincidence.

Dean didn't know he was Dean, yet, of course. He still wore his hair long and in two braids, still grudgingly wore the skirts and dresses Mary wrestled him into. The point is, he could have been anywhere that day, but instead, he was at the Chapel Hill Community Center Park.  

"It hurts," Gabriel complained, and Castiel made a noise of acknowledgement. They were sitting on a bench near the play structure, a deliberate choice on Castiel's part. There was a  constant hum of activity—children playing games of tag, their blood pumping young and hot in their veins; scraped knees and bloodied palms, skin still soft and uncalloused; and, a little further away, tired parents sitting on other benches, pulses erratic as they watched their children stumble on the highest parts of the play structures, veins bulging as they shouted at their sons to play nice. If Gabriel could withstand this, he could withstand just about anything. Castiel remembered the burn of being newly-turned, the constant ache of thirst and how debilitating it could be before you got used to it.  

"Yes," Castiel said, watching. Dean jumped off the swing, oblivious to his own fragility, and John Winchester caught him just in time, erasing the worry lines creasing his forehead with a tight laugh, lifting the child up and spinning him around. Mary—sitting on the bench, cradling the infant Sam Winchester—looked up in time to see the laughter, smiling softly, but not in time to see the danger that preceded it. "It hurts, and you will bear it."  

"But why?" Gabriel whined. "What's the point?"  

"This is how you learn," Castiel said, smiling a little as he watched Dean's little family. "You go into the thick of it. You hunger, but you don't eat."  

"It's not like they matter," Gabriel muttered, and Castiel paused.  

He didn't resent Gabriel—Gabriel was merely exhausted from thirst, turned petulant by what to him was unquenchable hunger, a symptom and not the disease—but his chest still felt heavy.  

So many of his kind believed this way. Humans, they posited, were not immortal, could never be as all-knowing as vampires, and thus would always be inferior.  

Watching Dean's little family—Mary standing up, rocking Sam back and forth like she was dancing, John chasing Dean around the play structure—Castiel thought that this could not be further from the truth. Humans, he thought, had more meaning because their lives had an endpoint. Their love burned brighter because they knew it would outlive them. Their thirst for knowledge was all the more desperate and longing because it had limits.  

Vampires, he thought, had no such limitations, no such driving forces. They drifted purposelessly. What little purpose they did cleave to was entirely centered on humans, on their comings and goings, what they knew and didn't know. So who was truly inferior?  

"They do matter," he said finally. "You should remember. You were one not long ago."  

"Long enough," Gabriel countered, an edge to his voice, and Castiel turned to see Gabriel's eyes locked on the little family, could smell the venom welling in Gabriel's mouth.

"No," Castiel said simply. "You will not be drinking any of them. And you most certainly will not be turning any of them."  

"Why not?"  

Castiel sighed, still watching the Winchesters. The game was hide-and-seek, now, even Mary and the baby joining in, puttering off after John while Dean counted, peering out through gaps between chubby starfish fingers. Castiel realized with a little jolt that the child was staring at him.  

"You will not drink the child," Castiel said again, decisively.  

"That's not an answer."  

Before Castiel could answer, Dean finished counting and began looking around in despair. He tottered around the play structure, as though John and Mary would be crouching inside the slide or stooped somewhere underneath the monkey bars. In point of fact, they were a little ways away from the play structure, loosely obscured by a copse of trees; Castiel could just make out a few stray wisps of Mary's blonde hair. He could also hear a whispered argument, painful in its feverish intensity— _ don't want our kids growing up surrounded by horror stories _ , Castiel heard, and then tuned out, because Dean was screwing up his face, fat tears already starting to make their way down plump cheeks, and before Castiel could think better of it, he was up and approaching the child, Gabriel's protests sputtering behind him.  

"Hello," Castiel said, crouching down to Dean's height, the choked beginnings of his sobs cutting off in surprise. "What's your name?" He knew, of course—it was his business to know—but it seemed like a good question to begin with.  

"Deanna, but my friends call me Dean," the child sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "I wasn’t cryin' or nothin'."  

"Of course not," Castiel said gravely. "I believe that you are looking something. Is that correct?"  

"Yeah," Dean said grumpily, eyes downcast.  

"Have you heard of Harry Potter, Dean?"  

Dean's eyes lit up. "Are you a _wizard_?"  

Castiel smiled softly. "Yes, I am. A Hufflepuff, in fact. And Dean, I believe that you're a wizard, too."  

"I knew it. I'm a Gryffindor," Dean whispered reverently, eyes round.

"Perfect. You're brave, and I...well, you know what they say about Hufflepuffs." Castiel stood to his full height, reaching down to offer Dean his hand. "We're great finders."  

Grinning widely, now, Dean put a chubby hand in Castiel's own.  

He didn't want Dean to have to listen to his parents argue—if they were so involved in it that they weren't thinking about Dean toddling around the playground looking for them, it wasn't anything he needed to hear—so he led Dean around the play structure, whispering spells he remembered from one of his readings of The Sorcerer's Stone, Dean's fear forgotten in favor of glee.  

"Wait," Castiel said after some time, because surely John and Mary could wrap it up, now. "Dean, I think I see something over there. Some...some Muggles. I see a woman, and a man, and a...a baby?"  

"Mommy!" Dean said brightly, and turned to look at Castiel. "I'll be right back. I'm gonna _Apparate_!"  

Castiel watched as Dean sprinted away as fast as his little legs would take him until he disappeared behind the trees, then gestured to Gabriel, who was staring at him with a mixture of amusement and disgust.  

"Car. Now."  

They were almost to Castiel's current place of residence—another year, another shitty apartment—when Castiel finally broke the silence.  

"That, just so you know, was against protocol," he said. "I'm not a very good teacher."  

Gabriel huffed. "Fuck protocol. What I wanna know is, why that kid? Why is  _ it _ the one I can't drink?"  

Castiel sighed heavily.  

"First of all, that family lives in a Sanctuary District. Killing any of them would result in disciplinary action from the Council.” He turned to Gabriel, whose face was fixed in a frown, chin jutting out defiantly. “But beyond that, it's up to you who you drink. Everyone gets to decide their own moral code. But you asked me, before I changed you, to not let you kill anyone innocent."  

"No one's innocent," Gabriel mumbled.  

Castiel didn't take it personally. He knew for a fact that Gabriel was good at heart. That was why they had chosen him, after all. It was the thirst talking, the unbridled rage that came with most freshly turned vampires.  

"Perhaps not," Castiel said. "But some are more innocent than others."  

Castiel remembered—distantly, hazily, ephemerally—his human father, remembered fishing with him along the ditch bank when he was young.  

"Why did we spend all that time catching it just to let it go?" He remembered asking, remembered the indignance of a young child, remembered all but stomping his bare foot in the soft mud of the ditch bank.   

"Can't keep that fish, Cassie," his father had told him, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Big plans for that fish."  

Castiel recounted this story to Gabriel, who understandably was not amused.  

"Are you saying that that kid was a fish?"  

Castiel shook his head.  

_ Can't keep that fish, Cassie.   _

"I'm saying I don't have all the answers, but you'll figure it out eventually. You'll figure out who to hunt," he said, "but you'll also figure out who to protect." He pulled into a parking space, turning off the car and turning to look Gabriel in the eye. "You'll learn these people's names, Gabriel. You'll learn exactly who can and can't go missing, and you'll learn who you can and cannot bear to kill."  

"Whatever," Gabriel said lamely, climbing out of the passenger's seat, and Castiel sighed.  

He had a lot of work to do.

\- 

Later that night, long after John and Mary had fallen into a fitful sleep, Dean crept into Sam's nursery, pressing his finger to his lips as though Sam would understand the plea for silence. Maybe he did, judging from the way he stared serenely up at Dean as he bounced him on his hip.  

"Sammy," Dean whispered, "I met a wizard today. In a trench coat!"

Dean told Sam all about him—the tall, mysterious Hufflepuff, a wizard but maybe a superhero, too, who could find anything in the whole wide world. 

Sam's eyes, which had been drooping sleepily throughout this entire ordeal, finally slipped shut, and Dean hugged him to his chest for a moment, whispering into his silky baby hair.  

"Sammy," he said, breathing in baby powder and Johnson & Johnson shampoo, filled with love for the bundle of baby fat he was cradling."I have so much to teach you."  

_ * _

**now**

Getting Dean upstairs is a struggle, but it's nothing compared to when Castiel asks, very quietly, for Dean to remove his shirt.  

"It's nothing," Dean insists, almost desperately, his brow beading with sweat. "You don't need to look at it. 'S nothing."  

Castiel sighs. Dean is noticeably more cogent, but also seems to be in a considerably larger amount of pain as the shock wears off. He's propped him up on the closed lid of the toilet, an impressive first aid kit— _ Sam's _ , Dean spat with disdain by way of explanation, making Castiel almost, almost smile—open on the counter.

"Dean, if you won't allow me to take you to the hospital, I have to examine you properly."  

"I'm pre-med," Dean mumbles weakly, but obediently strips off his shirt. He can't lift his arms very high, so Castiel helps him, averting his eyes.  

Oh.  

Dean is wearing a chest binder, and suddenly everything makes a lot more sense.  

"Don't," Dean says immediately, pleadingly. "I know. Just."  

"It's okay," Castiel says softly, before Dean tries to apologize. "I can let you do it on your own."  

"We both know I'm not gonna be able to," Dean says, eyes downcast. He's still shaking a little, maybe from cold, now. Maybe from fear. Castiel looks at the bruises on his face and aches for him.  

"Okay," Castiel says, and swipes his thumb over Dean's cheek, because damn it all, he's already too close. "Whenever you're ready."  

"I'm ready," Dean says, very quietly, and takes a shallow breath.  

 

* 

**2003**

 

The second time Castiel saw him, it was less of a coincidence.  

"I'm sorry, Castiel," Tessa sighed, massaging her temples. "There just aren't enough resources."  

Castiel leaned back in his chair, chest sinking. "You're certain?"

"I wish I wasn't," Tessa said, and when Castiel met her eyes, they were wide and sad and earnest. After a moment, he couldn't bear to look at them anymore.  

Gabriel was struggling. Castiel held the promise he'd made him as close and important as a blood oath—it practically  _ was _ a blood oath, after all—but Gabriel was still in the first year of his transformation, still dominated by his thirst. He hadn't killed yet—to that fact, Castiel clung gratefully and desperately—but in the pit of his stomach, he feared that it was only a matter of time.  

"I've been working with him for almost a year now," Castiel hedged desperately. "I know he can control himself. He just needs access to the blood bank, and maybe—"  

"Castiel," Tessa said, voice matching those sad eyes. "We're a research hospital. We struggle with meeting the needs of our patients who need blood transfusions, let alone keeping people fed. And you know it's not because I don't appreciate what you do, but...it's a huge risk even letting you do it, let alone two people."  

And there it was. Gabriel, who had been living off of half-empty blood bags Castiel had been able to scrounge up for him, wanted more than anything to not take an innocent human life. Much to Castiel's disgust, he had resorted to eating human food to supplement the blood he wasn't getting, even seemed to enjoy it—it's not as though they weren't equipped to digest it, but to most, anything that wasn't blood tasted like ashes, and human food provided very little in the way of nourishment. Gabriel insisted that, while it tasted different, it still tasted  _ good  _ to him. Inexplicable enjoyment of human food be damned, it wasn’t—couldn’t be—enough, and Gabriel was wasting away a little more every day, and the only hurdle between him and easy access to the blood he needed was Castiel.  

See, every vampire was different. Some hunted recklessly, had no problem killing innocent people. For Castiel, that was not an option, never  _ had _ been under Balthazar’s careful guidance. Some subsisted exclusively on blood from blood banks, but Tessa had rather neatly explained why this was not sustainable, not in their case. For Castiel, it was like this: he volunteered in the cancer wing, the part of hospital you went to when you were terminal. He knew firsthand that some things were worse than death. He spent his nights quietly explaining himself to desperate, hurting people and offering them a choice. The venom, Castiel knew, was a good way to go; the initial bite acted as a paralytic and a sedative. By the time Castiel began to drink, they had already fallen into what to them was a deep, peaceful sleep. Tessa handled the paperwork, handled making the deaths look like a product of the inevitable and not unnatural, immortal intervention. There were, of course, the people who felt terror instead of hope, the people who shied away from Castiel in horror and clung to their disbelief and fear. In Castiel's world, however, there was magic to take care of such things. Those people would wake up the next day, not remembering they had ever been frightened at all, not remembering the strange boy with yellow glasses.

On some level, Castiel knew that what he did helped people. This did not mean he didn't still feel guilt, feel grief. This did not mean he didn't still remember every face.  

The words came out before he could stop them. "Let Gabriel take over my position."  

Tessa's eyebrows lifted in surprise, her expression a mixture of incredulity and concern. "You can't be serious, Castiel."  

"He's starving, Tessa," Castiel countered firmly. "And I made him a promise. I'll teach him. I've been teaching him. He's willing to learn."  

"You realize this means you can't drink here anymore. I told you. It's too big a risk."  

"I know," Castiel said. Balthazar was going to kill him. Once he got past the initial rush of relief, Gabriel was probably going to kill him, too. "I know what I'm doing."  

"If you're sure," Tessa murmured, looking down at her desk, a mess of papers scattered in every possible direction. "Your selflessness is going to get you killed. What are you going to drink now?"  

Castiel shrugged, but the weight in his chest had lifted. "I suppose I'll have to figure it out."  

He walked out of Tessa's office feeling buoyant with purpose, contemplating texting Gabriel—Castiel loathed texting and struggled with the too-small keys of his Nokia, with the arduous process of tapping out even the shortest of messages, but Gabriel loved it, of course. He had gone so far as to fish the device out of the pocket of his trench coat, other hand on his car keys (not the Mercedes back then, not yet, but rather a yellow 1971 Ford Pinto that Gabriel insisted, loudly and repeatedly, was  _ a safety hazard and an affront to good taste _ ), when he saw Mary Winchester.  

Castiel had known that she was a nurse at this hospital—like he said, it was his business to know—but he was still surprised, coming to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk. She was towing a wriggling, resistant creature behind her, and without his permission, Castiel's chest warmed when he recognized the child.  

Dean Winchester. Gryffindor.  

"It's so  _ big _ !" Dean was saying, voice high and sharp with awe. Castiel saw Mary roll her eyes, but she was smiling.  

"Yes, Dean. You said that last time, too. And the time before that."  

"I love it here," Dean said proudly. He was taller, now, almost past Mary's hip, and his hair was cropped short. Castiel thought it suited the child, and couldn't help but smile—Castiel loved it here, too.  

In between the hospital and the parking deck, there was a tunnel, stretching high above the road below to avoid disrupting traffic with hospital pedestrians. When it was empty, you could hear your voice echo, feel the wind on your face. Castiel liked to sit there, sometimes, peering down at the passing cars and people, a detached observer.  

"I know you do," Mary said, and scooped Dean up, making the child shriek and giggle, affecting a voice that Castiel recognized as her best Dobby impression. "But Mommy is a free elf! No more work today! Dean Winchester must not stay in the tunnel! Dean Winchester must go home to her baby brother!"  

"Is Daddy home?" Dean asked eagerly, as Mary put him down again, and the lingering smile slipped off Mary's face.  

"Not today, baby," Mary said, and it shouldn't have, but Castiel's chest ached for them. "But Donna is! You love Donna."

"I do," Dean said, very seriously.  

Castiel was so preoccupied that he almost, almost didn't notice the man.  

Castiel had been leaning against the tunnel guard rail casually since he first saw Mary, Mary and Dean walking toward the parking deck, and a man in a dark sweatshirt ambled past him, a man whose name Castiel didn't know—and that was the first strike against him.  

The second strike was the knife Castiel could see him clutching in the pocket of his jeans.  

The third strike was the adrenaline and alcohol Castiel could smell pouring off him in waves. 

Venom pooled in Castiel's mouth, the metallic taste making his muscles coil reflexively. He clenched and unclenched his fists, still holding the damned Nokia.  

Before he could stop himself, he reached out and grabbed the man by the shoulder. Mary and Dean, oblivious, kept walking, and Castiel could just barely hear Dean talking excitedly about the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare (Dean:  _ I'm going to initiate baby Sammy! _ ; Mary:  _ I don't think that's how that works, sweetheart _ ; Dean:  _ It's never too early to think about elf welfare, Mommy _ ). He waited until Dean and Mary had gotten out of earshot before he leaned close to the man, eyes blazing.  

"What were you going to do to them?" His voice was low and dangerous.  

"I don't know what you're talking about, dude," the man said, slurring, and tried to take a staggering step forward. Castiel tightened his grip on the man's shoulder, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.  

"That knife in your pocket says otherwise," he all but growled. In the back of his mind, Castiel knew that this was wrong, that this could only end badly, that the fact that the fire in his belly was being fanned by the image of chubby-cheeked, Harry-Potter-loving Dean and his beautiful, self-sacrificing mother was going to be a problem, but at this moment, he could not quite bring himself to care.  

"What's it to you?" The man spat, struggling against Castiel's grip. "I just wanted to rough 'em up a little, see what was in that purse of hers." His eyes glinted with drunkenness and some kind of deeper, sicker satisfaction that made Castiel's stomach twist. "Maybe what was in those scrubs of hers, too."  

Castiel froze.  

"Lemme go, man," the man continued to struggle, and all at once, he wrestled out of Castiel's grip enough to pull out the knife, its point sharp at Castiel's hip. "What's a faggot like you going to do about it anyway?"

Castiel's remaining restraint crumbled, nostrils flaring.  

This man was not from Chapel Hill. Not from Carrboro. If he was, Castiel would know him.  

This man was homophobic. Was sexist. Was quite possibly a rapist. Was going to rob Mary with a knife to her throat, maybe do something even worse, heedless of the 5-year-old child she had with her.  

This was a man that would not—should not—be missed.  

Strike four.

Castiel dug his hand hard enough into the meat of the man's shoulder that he yelped, his other hand under the man's elbow, ushering him along toward the parking deck. As he grunted and struggled, protests growing louder in the emptiness of the tunnel, Castiel brought his mouth close to the man's ear, allowing all of the venom he could taste to drip into his words.  

"Shut the fuck up and stop resisting," Castiel said, "if you want to stay alive."  

\- 

Castiel's promise of life, of course, was fleeting. As he wiped the blood from his chin, careful not to drip any on the upholstery of his car, he gave a disparaging glance at the body next to him in the passenger seat. Balthazar had helped him put a damn near impenetrable glamour on the car—anyone who tried to peer in would find their gaze inexplicably drawn to something else, or find themselves seeing nothing of note, only Castiel, calm, two hands on the wheel—but he still felt filthy, being in such close proximity to it. He noted, with some alarm, that he felt no guilt, only satisfaction.  

Later on, after they had disposed of the body, after Castiel had explained to a deflating Balthazar what exactly had happened, his brow knitting together first in confusion and then in understanding, Castiel sat cross-legged on the roof of his car. He did this, sometimes, trying to find the stars above him behind the layers of light pollution.  

He had told Gabriel about quitting his job at the hospital, about how Castiel would train him to take over, and quieted the ensuing protests fairly easily. Gabriel was starving, after all, and indignant as he was about Castiel's self-sacrifice, he couldn't afford to say no.  

That still left the problem of what—of  _ who _ —Castiel would drink now.  

Castiel thought about the things he had seen. He thought about the war, back in his human life, a war for whether or not people that weren't white deserved to be bartered and sold like cattle. He thought about Stonewall—he was there, of course he was there—and about all the blood spilled, all the centuries of blood spilled for no good reason, for people thinking they were inherently better than other people.  

He felt troubled, his mind heavy with the weight of what he had done. He still felt no guilt, simply...the weight of an important change. Things were changing, he decided. Suddenly and with a surge of unexpected pain, he missed Anna, the third and most distant member of he and Balthazar's coven. She had been stationed in Asheville with Uriel, whose serious demeanor and lack of faith in humanity she had seen (and still saw) as a personal challenge. He loved Balthazar deeply, of course—Balthazar, his first and most faithful brother—but Anna had understood Castiel, had understood that not all of his pensive silences needed to be filled with banter or recollections of Balthazar's infamous  _ ménages à douze _ . Perhaps it was because they were turned in the same century. At the same time, he was glad for the distance as an excuse to not have to explain this to her—Anna, who had never killed a human, who first insisted on trying to subsist on animal blood before finally accepting that she was starving to death, who still grieved for her lost human family and drank only from blood banks even if it meant going weeks without food.  

And yet...surely she would understand? She was alive at the same time Castiel was, when the country was torn in half by racism and greed.  

Surely she would.  

Back then, Castiel killed racists with muskets.  

Now, he would kill racists ( _ and homophobes _ , he thought,  _ and rapists, and bigots _ ) with his teeth.  

_ * _

**now**

 

Dean's stomach, Castiel can't help but notice, is littered with scars.

With Castiel's help, Dean has managed to ease himself out of his binder inch by inch, groaning painfully at the loss of compression. Castiel is sure the binder was suppressing some of the pain from the rib injuries, but they can't afford to sacrifice Dean's ability to breathe.  

"They're definitely not broken," Castiel says softly, and Dean nods his head gratefully, growing clammier with each second that passes. He rips open a package of gauze, frowns at the alcohol wipes. He has to clean the wounds, but cleaning them will cause Dean pain, and therein lies the dilemma.  

"Go for it, Cas," Dean says, and grinds out a husky laugh. Castiel nods, once, and sets to work.  

Dean hisses a little, curling forward into Castiel, and Castiel gently pushes him back. "You'll hurt your ribs," he says.  

"Talk to me, Cas," Dean says desperately. "I can't do this if I'm not distracted. Just...just fuckin' talk to me, please."  

Castiel pauses in his ministrations to tuck some a strand of hair behind Dean's ear, looking at him carefully. "Of course."  

He wracks his brain. Not many of his stories are something he can tell Dean, but he has a few. He must.  

"Once," he says finally, "I was helping a patient, Pamela—"  

"You know Pam?" Dean grinds out, breaths starting to wheeze a little again. "Cancer patient? Dark hair? Sunglasses?"  

"That's her," Castiel says warmly. "I was just doing the usual things, fluffing her pillows, refilling her water, and she looked me in the eye." He winces as he dabs at a particularly tender-looking cut with the alcohol pad, murmuring a low apology. "I know it hurts. I’m sorry. I was wearing a sweater, minding my own business, and she looked me in the eye, and she said,  _ love your figure in that sweater.  _ I hadn't touched her."  

It's not a great story—barely even a story at all, Castiel realizes now that he's said it—but it has a profound effect on Dean, the tips of his ears going red. "Oh my fucking God."  

"What is it?" Castiel asks, smiling cautiously. He's finished the wounds on Dean's abdomen, so he moves cautiously to the ones on his face, dabbing gently.  

"That's my fault. God  _ damn  _ it, Pam."  

"What is?"  

Dean grunts as Castiel starts to work on the gash above his eyebrow, but recovers relatively quickly, all-too-eager to distract himself. "She didn't cosmically sense your sweater, dude. Don't get me wrong, she's perceptive as all hell, but. There's things even she can't know without help. She...she only knew you were wearing one because she heard about you from me."  

Castiel tries very, very hard to maintain a poker face. "Oh?"  

"Shut up," Dean mumbles, gaze flitting down to avoid eye contact. "You're this hot guy who wears sweaters year round and avoided me like the plague. I was kind of...okay,  _ obsessed  _ with you isn't the right word, but—"  

"You think I'm hot?" Castiel asks, which is definitely not allowed. He sticks a bandage over the gash, sitting down on the bathtub to look up at Dean.  

"Uh..." Dean looks down at his hands. "I mean, objectively, yeah."

Castiel smiles. "Objectively,” he says,  “I also find you rather...hot.” 

Dean's eyes shoot up to meet his at that, definitely blushing now. Castiel's dead heart feels ready to burst.  

He looks twice, then, at the black eye, at Dean's bare chest, partially obscured by the bathrobe Castiel wrapped him in, and his smile fades a little.  

"You're patched up," he says softly. "How do bed and painkillers sound?"  

"I think," Dean says tiredly, "that you are a fucking mind reader, Cas." And with all of the trust in the world, he reaches out for Castiel’s hand.

Castiel sees all of Dean at once—the chubby-cheeked child putting a hand in his,  _ are you a wizard? _ , the bright-eyed elementary schooler who had drawing after drawing of a superhero in a trench coat in the margins of his notebooks, a figure he eventually decided had been an imaginary friend, the sullen-faced teenager who went skeet-shooting with Jo, whose mourning was carved into his face, into his voice, stole his ability to admit to anyone that he cares about things, to admit how deeply he _ feels,  _ sees the curious college student who couldn't stop wondering about Castiel, the  _ man  _ sitting in front of him now, whose face is tired and bruised but is still looking at Castiel like he hung the moon, like he is a harbor in the middle of a stormy sea, who is struggling, has struggled, but is still pre-med, is still pulling As at a school where Cs are the high average and has the audacity to think he is  _ stupid _ , who offered him a room as easy as breathing, who calls him  _ Cas  _ and loves the hell out of his brother, whose hands can take pieces of twisted metal and tell them  _ go,  _ who can put this with that and make something that works, something out of nothing.   

Who is looking at Cas expectantly. Who is reaching out his hand.

Castiel takes it.  

Okay then.  

* 

**2005**

 

The third (fourth, fifth, tenth, fifteenth) time Castiel saw Dean, it was no coincidence at all. 

Unofficially and very quietly, he had become something of a protector to him. There was just something about watching Dean grow up, about watching him with his family, that brought him an overwhelming sense of peace. After the incident at the hospital, he had resolved to reduce his involvement. Truly, he had. But how could Castiel not intervene when Dean's class took a field trip to the Chapel Hill Public Library—at which Castiel worked as a librarian, spending his days reshelving books and eavesdropping—and Dean had been oblivious to the teetering shelf that was about to crush him? How could Castiel, in sound conscience, not keep an eye out on the boy whose parents were often so busy fighting (or, in Mary's case, with graveyard shifts that left her a shell of exhaustion) that they didn't notice the kind of trouble he got himself into?  

Despite himself—despite being told over and over what not to do—Castiel grew attached to the boy, to the way he took his baby brother outside when it was warm enough and read to him from his favorite storybooks, sounding out the syllables diligently as the baby looked up at him, transfixed, to the way his smile stretched so wide it looked like it would split his face right open. His attachment didn't dull as Dean grew older, but deepened as the child's chubby face thinned slightly, his knees turning knobby after a particularly large growth spurt. He watched as the books he read a growing Sammy go from picture books to the Harry Potter series (Dean, at age seven, now, was more than eager to read the books for himself rather than having them read out loud, and Sam, at age three, was more than content to listen, albeit with a dozen questions per page). He watched Dean draw pictures of his superhero in a trench coat, until the memories faded with time, until he became a forgotten imaginary friend. He watched as Dean endured scraped knees and mosquito bites, unfortunate haircuts and questionable outfit choices—but nothing, mind you, worse than that.  

Using glamours on oneself in situations where their necessity could be questioned was not strictly forbidden by the Council, but it was frowned upon. This did not stop Castiel from doing so, from quietly guiding Dean away from perilous leaps off of the top of his father's garage or out of the paths of strangers with bad intentions. Mercifully, Castiel didn't have to worry about  _ his _ sort of danger, the sort that came from his own kind. The Winchesters, like many young families in the area, lived in one of the only truly safe havens it had to offer. Their neighborhood landed squarely in the middle of a Sanctuary District, territory that, because of its high concentration of children, was forbidden to hunt on; anyone hunted in those neighborhoods would be noticed immediately, would cause widespread panic and attention that Castiel’s kind could not afford. Should Sanctuary Districts be hunted on, the Council would get involved. Dean could still wonder, of course, why he seemed to always be steered out of harm's way, but he was a child, and Castiel's glamours made sure his attention was quickly directed elsewhere.

Gabriel and Balthazar knew, of course, a silent sort of opposition that had very little bearing on Castiel's actions. He kept thinking of that anecdote he'd recounted to Gabriel, that first day in the park— _ can't keep that fish, Cassie. _

There was no keeping humans, not when you never died. Only loving them. And Castiel, he believed, had grown to love Dean. Balthazar and Gabriel didn’t have to vocalize how dangerous that was, because Castiel already knew.  

 

As it happened, the one night he didn't protect Dean was the one night he should have.  

He stood in the middle of what had been the Winchesters' backyard, the air thick with the scent of ash, of death. Where there had once been a house stood crumbling wood planks, blackened by flame. Guilt sat heavy in Castiel's chest like a stone.

He had applied another one of Balthazar's glamours. Usually, putting on glamours for Dean had felt like liberation, like freedom. Now it felt like an impossible burden. Balthazar stood to his left, Gabriel to his right, watching. Waiting.  

"I'm sorry," Balthazar said, not for the first time, and there was something profoundly wrong about bawdy, confident Balthazar with a tremble in his voice. "Castiel. Truly. I...I couldn’t stop him."   

"You're hurt," Castiel murmured distantly, for the first time registering the metallic scent coming off of him in waves, turned to see black blood dripping from his shoulder to his wrist. "You didn't say."  

"It doesn't matter," Balthazar said, and then laughed, bitterly and a tad hysterically. "It doesn't matter! We don't die unless we're killed by our own." He turned sharply to look at Gabriel.  

Gabriel had been uncharacteristically silent, and he looked at Balthazar with an unfathomable expression.  

Castiel placed a hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright?"  

"I killed him," Gabriel said, very quietly. "He's dead. I staked him, and I left him there, and he burned alive."

Balthazar flinched, and Castiel dropped his hand. There was no room for placating gestures, here. The tension between Balthazar and Gabriel was palpable, and it would only be a matter of time before it exploded. "They were hunting on Sanctuary District land," Castiel said, "and not only that, but they broke into a home to do it. This wasn't an accident. It was deliberate." He swallowed hard, revulsion giving way to nausea. "This is my fault."  

"Cassie," Balthazar said immediately, just as Gabriel cut in with a plaintive "I'm the one who—"  

"It was my fault," Castiel said firmly. "I took a special interest in—" Somehow, saying Dean's name felt like sacrilege. "In the Winchesters." He took a heavy breath. "The Allen coven has always gone against us. This was a direct attack."  

"Why would they risk this?" Balthazar wondered aloud, uninjured hand clasped to his shoulder, a wound Castiel suspected had come from Ramiel's blade. "The only reason they had to be here was the election, and that ended days ago. They could have gone straight home, but instead Azazel will be punished by the Council, and Ramiel..." He trailed off, expression pained. "Someone needs to gather the ashes."  

"I'll do it," Castiel said, closing his eyes in defeat, and then, before his brothers could protest, "I'm doing it."  

He approached the ruined house with reverence. Under no circumstances did he look to the family huddled together on the end of the stretcher, looking especially grubby against the starched-white ambulance. Did not look at John Winchester or his suppressed sobs, at Dean, clutching his brother for dear life, green eyes wide and unseeing.  

Did not look to the other stretcher, hidden from view of the family, a thick blue tarp pulled over the body.  

It was the damnedest thing. Gabriel and Balthazar had been on their way back from Cherry Pie— _ a den of iniquity, _ Balthazar called it with relish, a sly grin in place. Gabriel had wanted to buy DVDs that you had to show your ID to purchase ( _ purely for plot _ , he had insisted, aloof), and Balthazar to mock him for it. It was a path that took them directly through the Winchesters' slice of the Sanctuary District, and catching Ramiel and Azazel's scent was inevitable.  

By the time they realized what was happening, Mary was still and white on the floor of Sam's old nursery-turned-sewing- room. Castiel didn't know specifics, and thought that perhaps he didn't want to. He knew that Balthazar had mentioned bringing this direct violation of the law to the Council's attention, and Ramiel Allen, not known for his level temperament, had lashed out, landing blow after blow on Balthazar, who merely pled with Ramiel to see reason, refusing to attack one of his own. Gabriel, who had been looking for Ramiel's coven brother, Azazel, lost his scent and had rushed to Balthazar's aid. Seeing Balthazar bleeding and weakened and most of all unarmed, Gabriel struck back at Ramiel, blade landing clean and true. It pierced his heart, his face a mask of surprise and fury.  

And that had been when Balthazar and Gabriel smelled the gas.  

Gabriel's blade, stuck through Ramiel's chest and through to a support beam in the wall behind him, could not be moved. Ramiel, not yet dead but not quite alive, could not be saved. Gabriel, the more freshly-turned and therefore physically stronger of the pair, took Balthazar by the injured arm and manhandled him out of the house just as the flames exploded from the windows of the sewing room.

Azazel hadn't even run, his hands dirtied from unscrewing gas pipes. When Castiel had finally arrived after a breathless phone call from Gabriel, Azazel had been standing peacefully, surrounded by Officers of the Council.  

Castiel ran the story through his head numbly, over and over, unable to stop himself. If he had been there. If not for the tensions running so high in this year’s Council election. If he had never seen Dean, never taken an interest in him. If.

He crouched down, now, to the pile of ashes recognizable only by their proximity to Gabriel's half-melted blade, and, after a moment of hesitation, gritted his teeth and scooped them into his messenger bag.  

The ashes of the man who had killed Mary Winchester.

He stayed there doubled over for a moment too long, long enough for Balthazar to come to him, a hand on his back.  

"Castiel," he began.  

"There's nothing you can say," Castiel shot back, standing to his feet, fists clenched. "I ruined this family. I ruined them."  

Castiel turned to look at Dean, and his breath caught. Dean, it seemed, had finally been given the news, and he was sobbing with his whole body, burying his face in his father's chest. John stared blankly, and Sam still clutched his brother's sleeve, beginning to look more and more distressed.

He turned back to Balthazar. "There is going to be a Council meeting, I presume. And a trial."  

"Yes."  

Castiel didn't need to sleep—none of them did—but he was so, so tired.

"Not tonight," Balthazar said then, and braced Castiel's shoulders with his good arm. "Cassie. Listen to me. Tonight, we rest."  

Castiel allowed Balthazar to tow him away, nodded absently to his murmured words of comfort.  

There would be no resting tonight.  

_ Can't keep that fish, Cassie.  _

_ * _

**now**

 

Dean's bedroom, Castiel decides, suits him very nicely.  

The walls are white but covered in posters. It seems that Dean has a particular affinity for Star Wars, and Castiel notices with a fond smile that he has a line of Harry Potter action figures on his desk, which is cluttered with notebooks and empty soda cans. His focus quickly returns to Dean, who chokes on a labored breath, and Castiel shushes him gently, helping him sit down on the mattress as gently as possible. He throws back the quilt and Dean crashes into the pillows with a groan, forehead beading with sweat.  

"Thanks, Cas," he mumbles, eyes squeezed shut in pain. "Those, uh, painkillers, though—"  

"Of course," Castiel murmurs, pulling the quilt to Dean's chin. "In the first aid kit?"

"We have...the good stuff," Dean grinds out, "in the cabinet above the sink. Sammy got his—fuck, Jesus—his wisdom teeth out a few months ago."  

Castiel's hesitance to give Dean narcotics is outweighed by that face Dean is making, the way his chest is heaving. He finds the pill bottle in the bathroom and drifts to the kitchen, opens a few wrong cabinets before he fishes out a glass to fill with water. By the time he gets back, Dean has paled, gasping open-mouthed like a fish.  

"I should really take you to the hospital," Castiel says, handing Dean the pills, helping him ease forward to take a few sips of water to wash them down.  

"No," Dean says, and this time he just sounds tired. "The painkillers...will kick in, and I'll be okay. Promise. I'd make it a  _ pinky  _ promise, but, you know. Motion. It’s hard.” 

Castiel smiles, small. "If you're sure..." He stands, turns to go and give Dean his privacy, but he feels a tugging on his sleeve.  

"I  _ know  _ you aren't sitting up," Castiel says sharply, turning around, prepared to bodily force Dean to lay down if he needs to, and Dean, somehow, finds the energy to give Castiel a shit-eating grin. Blessedly, he isn't sitting up, but it still looks like the action has sapped any remaining energy he might have had.  

"Just..." His eyes flit away, and he flushes a little. "Can you stay?"  

Dean's face is childlike now, subtle and scared, and Castiel sees his hands, bunched up on the blanket in front of him, trembling. He is suddenly and acutely aware that Dean has suffered not only injury, but a trauma.  

He sits back down on the edge of the mattress, hesitantly puts a palm over Dean's hands, and Dean is already stuttering out a self-conscious " _ just in case I need anything before the meds kick in,"  _ but when Castiel slides back to lean against the headboard so that he's sitting next to Dean, he goes still, hurried explanations dying on his lips.  

"It's okay to be frightened, Dean."  

Dean's eyes slide closed and he takes a shaky breath.  

"It's not like I wasn't...wasn't sort of expecting it, you know?"  

Castiel still isn't liking the way Dean's having to breathe in the middle of sentences, but he's here to listen. He squeezes his hand over Dean's palms a little. "How could you? This isn't your fault."  

"I guess not," Dean mumbles, and the lines on his face are starting to smooth, from the comfort of talking or from narcotics or both. "But it's not the first time he's done it, you know?"  

Icy dread pools in Castiel's veins. "Done what?"  

Dean swallows hard. "I don't think this is a story you want to hear."  

Castiel thinks,  _ I want to hear all your stories.  _

Castiel thinks,  _ I know so many already. Too many. Not enough. _

Castiel thinks,  _ Dean.  _

But this isn't about Castiel's guilt, so he moves to run a soothing hand through Dean's hair, because he seems to like that.  

"It was high school," Dean says after a few moments of silence. He hasn't opened his eyes. "We went to the same one. He just..."  

Castiel doesn't let himself react, keeps stroking Dean's hair, but a voice inside him is screaming,  _ you protected this boy. You protected this boy when he didn't need it, and then one day he really, really did. And where were you then?  _

"He did things, Cas." Dean's face is open, now, vulnerable. Castiel wonders if this is the painkillers talking, wonders if he should stop him. "More than just beating me up. He..."  

Castiel's heart, not for the first time, breaks.  

"It's okay," Castiel says, and moves his hand from Dean's hair back to the hands still clutching his quilt for dear life. "I mean. It's not okay that he did it to you. But...it's okay to have had it happen to you. Does that make sense?"  

When Castiel looks down to gauge Dean's reaction, there are tears making their way down his cheeks, and Castiel startles.  

"Dean—"  

"I've just never really talked about it before," Dean interrupts, and his death grip moves from his quilt to Castiel's hand. "Maybe it's the Vicodin, I don't fucking know, but I've never fucking talked about it, not even to  _ Jo,  _ and you don't even fucking know what that means but just know that it's a big fucking deal, not  _ Jo _ , not  _ Sammy _ , not anyone, and now you're here and I have this weird feeling like you've known me my whole life and I just—"  

"Dean," Castiel says again, ignoring just how close to truth Dean is. "Stop trying so hard to give me a good reason for why you're feeling this way and just  _ feel  _ it."  

Dean's eyes open, surprised, and all at once it's like the breath is knocked out of him, crying so hard that he's making no sound. Castiel aches with it, but he knows this kind of pain, the kind that is going to insist on being felt whether or not Dean freely allows it to.  

"Okay," Castiel says, voice low. "You're okay. And if you're not okay now, you will be."  

"How do you know what to  _ say _ ?" Dean sobs, using fists to wipe his eyes like a child, so maybe this  _ is  _ part Vicodin, but the pain is so visceral that it's hard to look at.  

"Just saying what I think you might need to hear," Castiel murmurs. "You don't think you deserve to be saved."

Dean's breath hitches, and he turns to curl slightly into Castiel's chest, the quilt whipping around him to knock the glass of water off the nightstand. Castiel reflexively reaches for it, stretching over Dean in the process, and rights it before Dean is rolling back over, nose to nose with him.  

"Feel like I've known you my whole life," Dean mumbles, echoing himself from a few moments ago, and all at once he is craning his neck to kiss Castiel chastely on the lips.  

"Oh," Castiel says, breathing out in a rush, and very gently moves back to sitting against the headboard, his mind helpfully supplying him with the million and one reasons this can't happen.  

"I'm sorry," Dean says, eyes drooping. The tears haven't stopped, but the Vicodin is doing its job, lulling him toward a medicated sleep.  

"Don't be," Castiel says, still reeling. "We can talk about it later."  

"I won't want to," Dean mumbles. "Try to...to make me, okay?" His hands curl loosely against his chest, eyes slipping completely closed. "Non-medicated Dean is an asshole."  

Castiel, impossibly, smiles. "Sometimes."  

"Cas..." Dean manages, and then he's asleep.

Castiel stays where he is a moment longer, eyes squeezed shut.  

 

He knows a few things without a shadow of a doubt.

The first is that Dean needs help. Dean needs to talk, to  _ feel _ . He needs someone, and in his mind, this person is Castiel. Castiel seems to have underestimated Dean, because he saw it in his eyes—he  _ remembers  _ Castiel.  

The second is that Castiel can't— _ won't— _ do this to him again. Castiel has wounded Dean in ways he doesn't understand yet. He has to keep his distance. He has to try.  

The third is that someone, some living person, put those words into Dean's mouth, that crumpled, hopeless expression onto his face.  

Castiel, now, wants nothing more than to find that living person.  

He looks forward to meeting him, to seeing the expression on his face as he tears out his throat.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -wow ok a LOT of backstory and worldbuilding crammed into this chapter. im not fully satisfied but i hope it was vaguely satisfying!   
> -karma's got her kiss for alistair i promise   
> -i mention a 'donna' in this chapter. this is not donna hanscum, but rather the donna from that episode where sam is bodyswapped with a teenager while they're on a hunt involving their old babysitter (named donna). she's listed on the superwiki here! http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=5.12_Swap_Meat  
> -feel free 2 send me feedback or tell me i suck @sighfrancisco on tumblr xoxo


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for descriptions of torture   
> this chapter is ubeta'd and is being impulse posted at 3:20am EST because i have no self-control. enjoy!

**2015**

Gordon Walker's eyes burned with what might have been exhaustion, blood seeping through the white bandana pressed to his shoulder. Roy and Walt were... _adequate_ hunters, and that was all he could really say about them, trigger-happy and uneducated and way too easily spooked. Roy's stray bullet, fired  _after_ Gordon had already made their man, ricocheted off a pipe in a shower of sparks and gone clean through the meat of Gordon's shoulder. A flesh wound, but a nuisance all the same. 

Truth be told, Gordon barely felt the pain, barely had  _room_ to in between all the adrenaline and the satisfaction. He tossed back the contents of his flask, gulping until there was nothing left, licking the leftover ashes from his lips with relish. 

Killing a vampire was no easy task. The ingredients were a bitch to find, the technicalities confusing, but Gordon had done it. More importantly, he'd gotten the intel he needed. 

See,  _torturing_ a vampire...well. There was something uniquely satisfying about torturing the sons-of-bitches when they wouldn't— _couldn't—_ die. 

"This ain't what hunting's supposed to be, Gordon," Walt had muttered into the phone. "We don't seek them out. Not unless we want to die." 

"Are you in or not?" Gordon had asked flatly, cocking his gun. "There's a lot of coin to be made, here, but I'm happy to keep it to myself." 

Walt had paused at the mention of money, and Gordon had sneered, waiting. "I'll talk to Roy." 

"Thought so. Meet me at the coordinates I texted you. Midnight." Gordon had hung up the phone without waiting for so much as a breath of protest. Roy and Walt could rot in hell for all he cared; the backup would be nice, but he didn't need it. 

John Winchester, see— _that_ was a man with the makings of a good hunter. He'd taken Rufus's place with enthusiasm back in '07, all the old bastard's books and archives put to use for once. It had only been Rufus's dogged insistence and stubborn unhelpfulness that kept Gordon and the others under the radar, defending humans rather than attacking vampires, going so far as to practically coexist with them—a crock of shit, Gordon had always thought. Farmers didn't wait for parasites to attack before treating their crops with pesticides; farmers killed parasites before they'd even had the chance to  _think_ about latching onto anything. Vampires, Gordon believed, should be treated like the parasites that they were. He was of the school of thought that said punch first and punch hard.

John had been careful—the bloodsuckers not knowing he knew about them was, in his mind, the key to his success—and was known to handsomely reward hunters who helped him along on his revenge quest, and pay them double for their vows of silence. As if that wasn't enough—if there was anything Gordon respected, it was a check with a few zeroes and an excuse to act on his bloodlust—John had emphasized the importance of hunting  _smarter,_ not harder. 

They'd thought guns were useless against vampires until John had told them a few years back to try melting silver into bullets and packing the casings with salt, showed them how to make special molds that stamped the bullets with crucifixes. Trial and error had proven that they wouldn't kill, but they would slow the bastards down, sometimes even render the weak ones completely immobile. Even that had changed the game back then, but not long after, John had come back with another hit: the UV light. Hunters had always thought the sun angle was a dead end—so many of the bloodsuckers seemed to have naturally adapted to sunlight—but the direct exposure to a concentrated source of UV light seemed to be a surefire way to at least stun even the most well-adapted vampires. A blast of UV light followed by a well-placed silver bullet made it possible to wrangle the squirrelly fuckers, and cold-iron chains seemed to work well enough to keep them there for as long as it took. There was always, of course, the decapitation option, which did technically accomplish the goal of keeping the vamps in place, but it was not particularly helpful when trying to gather intel. Hard to speak when your vocal cords were severed. 

So yeah—when John had taken control after years of hunters being glorified babysitters, taken an action-based approach and given them the tools that let them stand a chance against the bloodsuckers, Gordon had liked the cut of the man's jib, even if he resented Winchester's lack of willingness to do his own dirty work.  _I'll do my dirty work when you find the bastards that killed my wife,_ he'd always intoned when Gordon said as much.  _Now do you want my money or not?_

Maybe there was something to be said about Gordon's willingness to jump into life as some kind of bloodsucker bounty hunter, practically Winchester's personal attack dog. It wasn't like there were many hunters left in their area (five if you counted John), and Gordon was the only one who had ever  _killed_ on Winchester's behalf. Roy and Walt had done a few reconnaissance missions apiece, and Bucky'd had nothing to do with any of it at all, insisting that he'd do what hunters had always done—hold the line—and nothing more. Maybe Gordon liked the violence. Maybe he liked the money. Maybe he didn't have much else going for him. The point was, tonight Winchester'd given him a lead on a vamp perfect for pumping for information—a drifter innocuous enough not to be noticed by that goddamn Council of theirs, but someone who knew his shit—and Gordon, with his shiny new Winchester-patented toys, had the tools to do so with gusto. A tough one, Winchester had warned Gordon, but one that he'd  _really thought_ _would turn the tide._

 _"_ Ain't they gonna start noticing their own kind turning up dead and connect the dots?" Roy had muttered tersely from the passenger seat of Gordon's pickup truck, clutching his rifle nervously, like a kid about to go hunting with his dad for the first time. "I still don't think this is a good idea." 

"Shut up," Walt had said before Gordon could. "We get in, Gordon does his shit, we get out, we get  _paid."_

"That's right," Gordon had replied. "In and out." 

It had not, in fact, been in and out. The vamp had been ready to talk after losing the fourth fingernail, after the first seven strips of flesh Gordon had lovingly carved from his body, but Gordon hadn't been quite ready to stop playing. How curious a thing it was, to carve the kidney out of someone who could live through it, who couldn't even lose consciousness—a strange, blackened, twisted organ, warped from centuries of use, but definitely, recognizably a kidney. 

Gordon smiled, now, remembering, teeth stained black-red from the concoction he'd just sucked down. He thought he'd probably be hearing those screams in his dreams, be remembering the expression on the bloodsucker's face well into his golden years—as though someone with a life like his would live to have golden years. Maybe  _these_ were his golden years, Gordon mused. It had been Roy and Walt who wouldn't shut up until Gordon finally, very slowly, staked the bloodsucker's heart, until he ignited the corpse and leaned against the cement wall of the storage locker serving as their interrogation room, some out-of-the way thing Winchester had promised would keep them from getting caught, just watching. Just enjoying the view. 

"You're sick," Walt had spat when it was all over, slamming the truck behind him when he got out, Roy not far behind. "Don't forget to send us our cut. I mean it, Walker." 

"You shot me," Gordon had replied smoothly. "Expect a smaller cut." 

Neither of the men had much to say to that. 

Gordon eased the pressure off his shoulder wound, a self-satisfied smirk still quirking his lips up at the corners, and reached for his burner phone. He called his only contact. 

"Winchester," the man answered immediately, though it was nearly four in the morning. Eager. Always so damn eager. The need for revenge had made him positively rabid, and even after all these years, it still rubbed Gordon the wrong way. 

"Got your guy," Walker said, and idly reached for a toothpick, started chewing on it. "Have some information for you." 

"I don't pay you to stall," Winchester fired back, gruff, and Gordon nearly laughed, drunk on the power, on the exhilaration. 

"Your guy is close. Real close. He's stationed here or some shit with his brothers. Two of them, I think." 

"I could've told you that," John said sharply. "You were supposed to find out—"

"You didn't let me finish," Gordon said, and John fell silent. "Castiel Milton? One of the brothers, the older one? He's been assigned to  _you,_ but you've kept such a low profile that they don't know you're a hunter." 

"Meaning?" 

"They know you've got your hands on some pretty hefty materials, and they want to keep an eye on you. A real  _close_ eye on you." Gordon licks his teeth. "Guy seemed to think if you opened up the slightest opportunity, Castiel would jump on it." 

"Like what?" John asked, and Gordon rolled his eyes, examining the toothpick. Ashes were still between his teeth, apparently. 

"I don't know, Professor, you're the one with the doctorate." He paused. "If it were me, I'd open a call for assistants or some shit. You know. Something involving the books. The books are what they're worried about." 

"You're sure this isn't some kind of trap? How do they not know I'm a hunter?" 

Gordon rolled his eyes. "You pay us in cash. They monitor us hunters, but they don't monitor us  _that_ closely. They think we're harmless. Hunters haven't actually  _hunted_ in...shit, it's been decades. And trust me. That bastard didn't lie to me." He idly poked at his bullet wound, the blood finally slowing to a trickle. "He tried, for a while. The lies stopped when he lost fingernail number three." 

"Take it easy," John said, and Gordon could hear the shift from the grieving professor to the ex-Marine, Winchester's biggest tell when he was trying to intimidate Gordon into submission. It had almost worked...the  _first_ time. "I'm not paying you to torture vamps for fun. If you blow my cover, it's all our asses on the line." 

"My ass is on the line anyway," Gordon said levelly. "So the way I see it, I do what you pay me for, and anything else I do is none of your business." 

The line was quiet for a moment. "Open a call for assistants," he said eventually, voice heavy with disbelief. 

"I'm telling you," Gordon replied, growing impatient. His right hand squeezed and unsqueezed, making and unmaking a fist, a repetitive clench and release motion that made the bullet wound burn in a way that he found inexplicably satisfying. "Milton will apply, and when you've got the brother? He may as well have handed you your perp on a platter." 

John hummed in acknowledgement. "You better not be shitting me, Walker, or I swear to God—" 

"I got it, Winchester," Walker replied, and closed the flip phone with a snap. After a moment, he dropped the cheap device onto the floor, crushing it under the heel of his boot. 

When Winchester needed him again, he would find him, but for now, he had a lead that would keep him busy for a while, maybe even let him unravel the rest of his revenge quest on his own. 

Meanwhile, with Winchester's blood money lining his pockets, with those sweet memories of the bloodsucker's screams at the forefront of his mind, Gordon smiled to himself, pulling his gun from its holster, liking the solid weight of it in his hand. 

He could think of a few ways to keep himself busy until then. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posted unbeta'd because i've kept y'all waiting for so long - subject to edits later!

Sam, not unexpectedly, loses his motherfucking shit.  

Dean is slumped into Castiel's side when he comes home, barely aware enough to hear the door open and shut, to hear whistling (and then the whistling cutting off, the sound of something being dropped, probably when Sam catches sight of the blood smeared on the doorjamb— _ Dean? Dean! _ ). Blessedly, he begins to sink back into unconsciousness just as he hears his own bedroom door wrenched open, feels Castiel shifting underneath him and a low, gravelly voice murmuring to a frantic Sam. The last thing he feels is Castiel's goddamn trench coat, material trailing behind him for a moment after he has risen from the bed. He grasps for it weakly for a moment before his eyelids grow too heavy and he sinks into a deep, medicated sleep.  

* 

A peculiar thing happens, Sam thinks, when you grow up with a sister who turns out to be your brother.  

Your father drills into your head from day one, no matter how much younger you are,  _ she is your sister, and you have to protect her, just like we protect Mommy.  _

Dean was never easy to protect, of course, even when he wore his hair in two long braids, Mary even less so from what Sam remembers (to be fair, he doesn't remember a lot). But he remembers Dean, always Dean, with scraped knees and bruised knuckles and  _ I'll watch out for you, Sammy.  _ Sam was never the protector, here.  

But now he's looking at Dean, at how fucking  _ small  _ he looks, and he thinks,  _ I fucked up.  _

Later, when Dean is asleep again, is out like a light thanks to the wonders of herbal tea and Vicodin, Sam sinks to the bathroom floor and calls Jess.  

“ _ Breathe, baby,”  _ she says, voice all tinny and distorted, and Sam clutches the phone like a lifeline, fingers of his free hand loosely curled around an inhaler. “ _ It's going to be okay. I'm on my way.”  _

"Okay," Sam says, but when he squeezes his eyes shut he just sees Dean, bleeding. Blood on the doorjamb. Blood on the floor. (Dean, on the tile floor, seizing, lips turning blue. The vomit. The empty bottles of pills.) "Notokaycan'tlosehim," he breathes out, and Jess sighs through the phone, sounding so fucking sad for him. 

_ “You didn't lose him. He's not lost. I’m right here, okay? Your lungs can’t handle you freaking out right now.” _

"Can't," Sam wheezes, and panics a little more at that. Dean's asthma has always been worse. Sam's asthma is an annoyance, a genetic disadvantage, a cough a little worse than is necessary called for during flu season. He doesn't have  _ time— _

"Sam?"  

The voice doesn't belong to Dean, or Jess. When Sam's head snaps up, it's Cas standing there, forehead creased with concern.  

"Cas," Sam manages, musters up a watery smile. "I'm fine."  

"You're in respiratory distress," Castiel counters, and crouches down, frowning. He reaches out to put a palm flat against Sam's back. "Are you having an asthma attack?"  

"Dean—" Sam chokes out.  

"He's okay," Castiel says, and then something in his face smoothes out. "You're worried about him. He's safe, Sam."  

Sam buries his face in his knees. "You're s'posed to be with him. You barely even...know me." Breathing in the middle of sentences is no good. He gives the inhaler a shake, and now that he’s looking at it it might be Dean’s, so that’s fucking excellent. 

"We do share a more profound bond," Castiel murmurs in agreement, watching Sam take a hit. "Should I wake him? He'd want to know..."  

"I'm okay,” Sam exhales, and wonders if the metallic taste on his tongue is his imagination or the medicine or  _ blood from his brother’s fucking mouth _ . "I'm just..."  

"Dean says you have anxiety," Castiel says, and there's something reassuring about the matter-of-factness of it. It makes Sam laugh unexpectedly. "Well, actually what he said was,  _ We both drew some short-ass straws, but I'm Eeyore and he's Piglet.  _ I had to, uh, Google it."  

"I do, yeah."  

"I suffer from mental illness too, Sam," he says gravely. "It's nothing to be ashamed of."  

"I'm not  _ ashamed _ ," Sam snorts. "You think me and Dean have time to be ashamed? That's why I do the yoga. And the health shakes, and the strict diet. It helps me stay in control without having to fucking turn the lights off and lock the door seven times just to make sure. I'm coping, I guess." He has enough time to register that this is more than he planned to divulge to his brother's maybe-boyfriend and then remembers Jess, who seems to have gone quiet on the other end of the line. "Shit. Jess, hey, I'm sorry. Are you still there?"  

_ “I'm here. I heard everything. I'll be there soon, okay? You talk to Cas.” _

Sam loves the shit out of his girlfriend, is the thing. He smiles softly at the sound of the dial tone, knows that she's probably pulling into the parking lot right this very second. He seems to be on the come-down, like maybe he disrupted the panic attack before it could really start.   

"I'm okay, Cas," Sam says, as much for his own benefit as for Cas's. "I really am. It's just..."  

"He's your brother," Cas says, head tilted to the side. "The thought of losing him is too much to bear."  

"Yeah," Sam manages, and has the acute feeling that Cas has lost a great deal in his life.   

"I care for your brother very deeply," Castiel says after a brief lull. "I wanted you to know that."  

"I can tell," Sam says, and then something dark and ugly blooms in his chest, that instinct to  _ protect protect protect.  _ "We've had a hell of a time, Cas. You need to keep that in mind."  

Castiel, to his credit, does not break eye contact, meeting Sam's gaze levelly. "I wouldn't dream of it, Sam. I...I don't want to hurt him."  

Maybe it's the hesitation that sells it for Sam, the fucking aching sincerity in his voice. Sam, against his better judgement, trusts Cas, in the bone-deep way he knew he'd trust Jess the first time he met her, so you do the math on that one. And they're sitting on the bathroom floor together, their knees inches apart, so. That's bonding, Sam guesses.  

"I'm thinking of..." Cas starts, and then cuts himself off with a frown. "I don't know. I'm considering taking some...distance."  

"Distance," Sam repeats, slowly, and he's very aware of his heart pounding hard and slow in his chest. "From Dean?"  

"Relatively speaking," Castiel murmurs. "I come with my own baggage, and it seems Dean has some things he needs to work through too," and wow, shit, the guy actually looks pretty torn up about this. "I wouldn't want to hinder his recovery."  

Sam's mouth twists, and he tilts his head back against the cabinet under the sink. The wood creaks a little like always, which he finds strangely comforting. It's shitty, this little apartment of theirs, but Sam knows its quirks and tells. "Maybe you should let Dean decide what he can handle. By which I mean, let him decide, or he, personally, will kick your ass."   

Castiel huffs a laugh, but it sounds kind of sad.  

"I'm joking, but I'm not," Sam says, and okay, he guesses he's doing this. "Dean and I have been through hell, Dean even more than me, and we're still kicking. The least you can do is give him the benefit of the doubt about what he can handle. He's a stubborn asshole sometimes, but..." Sam's shoulders slump. "He deserves our trust. He deserves  _ your  _ trust."   

Sam wants to say,  _ Don't do this to him. Don't be Cassie Robinson.  _ But that isn't his story to tell.  

Castiel still hasn't said anything. Sam sighs. "I'm just saying...don't bail on him, okay? Take your space or your distance or whatever, but don't abandon him. He really cares about you, man."  

"Gryffindors value loyalty," Castiel says, always so solemn, and Sam smiles a little.  

"Damn right. Maybe just...talk to him? Instead of like, disappearing?"  

"I will think about what you've said," Cas says with that strange formality of his, nimbly getting to his feet, and holds out a hand to help Sam up.  

"Thanks for talking to me, man," Sam mumbles. "You promise he's okay?" 

"I've been watching over him," Castiel says. "He's mostly sleeping. He'll be due for another dose of painkillers in an hour, but I set an alarm."  

"Thanks, Cas." Sam hears the front door opening, the familiar jangle of Jess's million and one keychains. He shuffles out of the bathroom, cringes at the feeling of his socks on carpet, but when he sees her, his face splits into a grin.  

(Castiel watches Sam wrap Jess carefully in a hug, watches her stand on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around Sam's neck, and he smiles a little.)  

( _ What'd you boys talk about?  _ Jess asks, close to Sam's ear, and Sam kisses her on the cheek.  _ Just relationship advice,  _ Sam says.  _ Where would they be without me?)  _

( _ What makes you think you know anything about relationships?  _ Jess says, pulling Sam's face down to hers, and they laugh into each other's mouths.)  

( _ It's not about what he can handle,  _ Castiel doesn't say.  _ It's about what I should inflict on you. Your little family. I can't do this to you anymore.  _ But he can't explain these things to Sam, not yet, so instead, he shuffles back to Dean's bedroom and thinks of Balthazar.)  

* 

It's been well over a week, and Sam hasn't left Dean's fucking side, and that is decidedly not the appreciative sentiment it pretends to be. Sam  _ hasn’t left Dean’s fucking side _ , which is to say Dean itches under the scrutiny, misses the Impala like hell, and Sam...Sam  _ frets.  _

Now, Sam paces, and Dean massages his temples. "I'm  _ fine _ , _ "  _ he says grouchily from where he's camped out on the couch, about a thousand blankets draped over his legs. Sam has been fussing for the better part of an hour and is currently pacing the living room with a pillow in one hand and a thermometer in the other, muttering something about a study he read,  _ infection can set in weeks later, Dean, weeks _ !, and Dean is just about at the end of his rope, here.  

All of this because Dean dared to say, very quietly,  _ I'm going to have to go back to class eventually.  _

" _ Sammy _ ," he says when his gigantic brother doesn't settle, Dean's brain unhelpfully supplying him with images of Sam as a colicky baby, but Sam keeps pacing. "Sam.  _ Seriously _ ."  

The pacing has taken on a frantic quality, and Dean's eyes briefly slide closed.  

There was one thing that helped Sam when he was a colicky baby.  

Amid Sam's protests, Dean wrenches himself to his feet, impatiently shoving off the blankets he's been diligently piled with. There's a now-familiar twinge of pain in his ribs, but he's not an invalid—far from it, in fact, _ not that you would be able to tell from Sam's ministrations, thank you very fucking much for that, Sam _ . Sam continues his tirade,  _ don't be reckless, Dean, sit back down, you're not healed yet,  _ and wow, Dean really doesn't like those bags carved under his baby brother's eyes, and Sam is opening his mouth to gather breath for his next rant about Dean jeopardizing his own health or whatever the fuck, and Dean stands on his tiptoes to reach up and wrap his arms around his ridiculous, gigantic, colicky baby brother.  

He feels Sam freeze and then soften, tension bleeding from his shoulders as he shrinks to fit Dean, that ridiculous hair tickling his neck.  

"Sammy," Dean says into Sam's chest. "I'm okay. You're gonna throw a blood clot if you don't settle down."  

"Fine," Sam says, and fuck, is that  _ moisture  _ Dean feels where Sam's pressing his face into his shoulder? "But I'm not happy about it."  

"Okay, you giant  _ idiot,"  _ Dean mutters, and eases forward, nudging Sam until he sits down on the couch. He sits across from him, a hand pressed to his aching ribs—yeah, okay, he's not an invalid, but it still  _ aches— _ and drags one of the blankets from the pile back onto his legs, putting his feet in Sam's lap pointedly.  

"Okay," he says again when he's settled. "So. What the  _ hell _ , dude?"  

Sam sniffs, scrubbing irritably at his eyes—yeah, so definitely crying, then—and looks at Dean pitifully. "You have to take  _ care  _ of yourself, Dean."  

Dean blinks. "Dude, I'm—"  

"Stop, okay?" Sam all but cries, and pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation, concern and annoyance battling for dominance in the lowering of his eyebrows, in the lines of his forehead. "Stop with the  _ dude, chill  _ and the macho bullshit and acting like everything's fine! You were attacked, Dean, and that piece of shit is still out there, doing God knows what—"  

"You think I don't know that?" Dean asks, more harshly than he means to. "You think I of all people forgot that I was  _ attacked,  _ by fucking—by fucking  _ Alistair Whitlock,  _ of all people?"  

The thing is that Sam doesn't know. Cas doesn't even know. Alistair isn't doing  _ God knows what.  _ He's blackmailing Dean, with the kind of heavy shit that ruins lives (ruins little future lawyer brothers' lives), and the only thing Dean can do to stop it is...what? Stop avoiding Alistair? Subject himself to...? He stops the thought before it can go much further, clenching his hands into fists.  

"I'm sorry, man," Sam says, misinterpreting Dean's tense silence, and breathes out harshly through his nose. "It's just...you  _ scared  _ me, dude. So yeah, I'm Wikipediaing and WebMDing the shit out of this. I..." He laughs a little, helplessly. "I don't know how else to be."  

Here is the thing about Sam: he is  _ very  _ functional. He was printing out college brochures and alphabetizing them in binders when he was eight years old. For Christmas one year, he lost his mind over a pack of highlighters and a label maker, which he promptly used to inventory his sock drawer and his toy chests. He loves the shit out of a color-coded Google doc, could solve the world's problems with an Excel spreadsheet, and that's just Dean's little fucking brother, you know?  

Except...Dean's little fucking brother is wringing his hands right now, is counting his fingers over and over and over again the way he used to do when he was a kid, and sometimes Sam likes to count in sevens to help calm him down, has little routines that he likes to do every night ( _ has  _ to do every night) to keep him sane, and his bed is always made with hospital corners, and there is a shelf above his desk with different kinds of hand sanitizers, and before Sam met Jess he used to rub his hands raw, terrified there was some microscopic pathogen on his skin,  _ I have to be clean, Dean.  _

It got worse after their Dad died, Jess sitting on his legs while Dean bandaged the raw flesh and cracked knuckles, Jess twisting strands of that shaggy goddamn hair into braids, trying to crack jokes (Jess:  _ what would you do without me, huh?;  _ Sam, either laughing or crying:  _ Crash and burn, probably).  _ If Sam hadn't had Jess when Dean tried to kick the bucket, Dean doesn't know what would've happened.  

Here is the thing about Sam: he can't watch anything about brothers without crying. Dean makes fun of him, but gently, with a hand on his shoulder, while Jess smiles and kisses him on the cheek. When they watched Charlie St. Cloud, Sam bawled for hours. Dean doesn't really know how to feel about that.  

"Where's Jess, huh?" Dean murmurs without fulling meaning to, and Sam ducks his head, flushes.  

"It's not like that, Dean," Sam mutters, and his hands still, limp like dead things in his lap.  

"It's anxiety," Dean says, forcibly tries to make his voice gentle. "It sucks, you know? That shit hurts. Just... _ this  _ isn't something you have to be anxious about. I know it doesn't work like that," he hurries to correct himself, "but...I'm okay, Sammy. I promise. I've had you taking care of me. And I've got—"  

"Cas?" Sam says, raising his eyebrows. "Yeah, about that."  

"About that," Dean echoes darkly, and it's his turn to look down, the tips of his ears flushing.  

"Listen, dude," Sam says, and sits forward all fucking  _ earnestly,  _ which is Dean's first cue to run. "I'm all for it, okay? He seems great. It's just that you've only known each other for—"  

_ "Saaaaaaam _ ," Dean groans, and throws a pillow at him. "You don't need to give me a talk here. And for what it's worth, me and Jo stalked him for, like, a year. So." 

"Wait." Sam's eyes widen. " _ Wait.  _ Cas is  _ Sweater Guy?  _ Our roommate is  _ Sweater Guy?"  _ And wow, okay, Jesus, Dean's pretty sure he hasn't heard Sam's voice crack up to that particular octave since before he hit puberty.  

" _ Yes  _ oh my  _ God  _ shut  _ up _ ," Dean mumbles, composing his face into a good-natured scowl.  

"So this crush was totally pre-existing!"  

"It's not a  _ crush,"  _ Dean says scathingly, but his freckles are disappearing under a layer of crimson, so that's a fucking great alibi, there, Dean. "And...I know I haven't spent crazy amounts of time with him, okay? Something just kind of...clicked. It feels like I've known him forever. Maybe I'm a giant cliché. And he really helped me out, after..." His voice catches. "After, uh, everything that went down."  

"You were  _ snuggling,"  _ Sam says accusingly, and Dean shoves him, minding his ribs, but Sam isn't counting his fingers anymore, so he'll count this as a win.  

"Shut up. I got the shit beaten out of me! You've never seen a grown man snuggle after being in the  _ trenches?  _ Fuck off."  

Sam's dimples are showing, so crisis averted, basically, but Dean's mouth is still being tugged down at the corners.  

The thing is, Cas has made himself awfully scarce in the week since Alistair attacked him.  

"Okay, but seriously, where  _ is  _ Jess?" Dean asks before he can dwell on that thought for too long. "I thought you had to see each other every 48 hours or you  _ die _ ."  

Sam rolls his eyes. "She was around at first, but you were boring. Sleeping all the time."  

"Ha, ha." 

"She had to go to a model U.N. conference a couple days ago. But she's coming over tonight, if you must know."  

"Isn’t that a high school thing?” 

"High school _slash college._ She’s really into it, _”_ Sam says, and then, without waiting for Dean to ask, “She’s coming over ‘cause it's the first night of Hanukkah." He’s practically glowing. "We're gonna light all the fucking candles. I learned the prayer! She's making latkes. It's gonna be great."  

Dean shakes his head. "Does that have kale in it?"  

Sam rolls his eyes. "No, I think it's gonna be Dean Winchester approved. They're basically really good hashbrowns."  

"In that case," Dean says magnanimously, "shalom, bitch." He pauses. "Am I allowed to say that?"  

" _ Chag Sameach _ , bitch," Sam corrects reflexively, "I mean, uh, leave off the bitch part. I don't know. We'll ask Jess."  

Dean sinks back into the cushions, satisfied.  

"That said," Sam says, and extricates himself from under Dean's legs, "I have to go buy, like, ten pounds of potatoes. And a bunch of other groceries. Not to mention the, uh, Hanukkah stuff."  

"Divide and conquer?" Dean offers, and stands to his feet like he has something to prove. "Let me get the Hanukkah stuff. It has a whole section at Party City."  

"You're really not getting this  _ you need to recover  _ thing, huh?"  

Dean glowers. "Sam, I've been on bedrest for a  _ week _ , and I'm going somewhere whether it's Sammy approved or not. You might as well let me buy the damn menorah."  

Sam's eyebrows lift.  

"Don't look  _ impressed,  _ Jesus, I know what a  _ menorah _ is. I didn't grow up under a rock. The disrespect! God, who raised you?"  

"You," Sam says, grinning a stupid, sentimental grin, and God, okay, fuck this kid with his dimples and his straight As and concern rolling off him in waves, yeah, Sammy, you’re not fooling anyone, anxious kid, please stop worrying about Dean because worrying is  _ Dean’s fucking job,  _ okay?  

"I'm  _ going,"  _ Dean says pointedly, and Sam rolls his eyes and says "hold on, I have a list," and yeah, okay, this is good. This is better. Dean can work with this.  

He can almost forget that picture. Alistair's cell phone. His cold, sick grin, a vulture closing in on him like he's already dead.   

* 

Dean doesn't go to the Party City. Not at first, at least.  

When he pulls into the police station, he sits outside for a long time, long enough for the nervous sweat to cool on his neck, fingernails bitten down to the quick.  

He's parked right behind Bobby's fucking police cruiser.  

He doesn't really know what to do here, is the thing. It's a double bind, and Dean learned about that bullshit in women's studies.  He doesn't know how to look Bobby in the eyes and tell him what happened. He doesn’t know how to look in the mirror and _think_ about what happened. 

In the end, he wrenches himself out of the Impala like an act of aggression, and maybe angry is the only way Dean knows how to do things, yeah, he doesn't want to analyze it, thank you very fucking much, because the fucking  _ thing  _ about this is that everyone has been worrying about Dean since last year, since that hospital stint where he  _ almost died, Dean, it’s a big fucking deal!  _ and sure, yeah, whatever, he had a seizure or two from the overdose, he was in the ICU for a night or two, it’s all very exciting, but Dean doesn’t want pity and he certainly doesn’t want  _ worry _ but, well. 

He wouldn’t mind seeing Alistair behind bars (seeing Sam pass the bar exam).   
He wouldn’t mind never seeing Alistair again (little brother, safe, never having to worry about this again). 

He has mixed feelings walking into the police station, like always—the smell of strong coffee and people’s microwaved breakfasts and something acrid, probably cigarettes based on how his lungs tingle, drapes over him as a blanket, but he also remembers being wrestled in here at 5 in the morning under Bobby’s reproachful, damn-near-mournful gaze, yeah, you think Dean was just  _ fine _ up until last year? Fucking give him a break. Dean’s been acting out since before he had something to act out about. 

“Dean I swear to  _ God _ ,” Dean hears, and that’s all the warning he has before he has a faceful of fiery red hair, lips at his ear, “I am  _ not  _ wiping your record again.” 

Dean’s lips turn up into a smile despite himself. “Relax, Charlie. You see any handcuffs?”

“Mmm, handcuffs,” Charlie says wistfully, and Dean backs the fuck away because he knows the buildup to a kinky Charlie-and-Gilda sex story when he hears one. 

“I’m  _ filing _ a report this time, thank you very much,” Dean says, saying it like a joke to avoid whatever well-meaning worry Charlie’s about to hit him with. “Shouldn’t you be  _ behind  _ the desk? What kind of fucking worth ethic—let me speak to your supervisor.” 

Charlie rolls her eyes, and moves back behind her desk in a way that Dean can only describe as  _ flouncing,  _ meet Charlie fucking Bradbury, nerd slash ray of goddamn sunshine. She waggles her eyebrows at Dean over her computer screen, and the knot that’s been in Dean’s chest loosens, just a little. 

She’s not Dean’s best friend—that role is filled, thank you very much—but God, he loves her sometimes (all the time). She’s just this stupid, bubbly, badass geek he met at Friday Night Magic: The Gathering a couple years ago at Dean’s favorite comic book store (yeah, sue him, Dean’s life is in shambles and he learned early on that absorbing himself in fiction was the best antidote, get off his fucking case, don’t overanalyze it). They were doing a four-player free for all, and the guy across the table from them had sneered  _ I’ll go easy on you, ladies,  _ and maybe Charlie saw the way Dean stiffened, saw the way he tucked his chin into his chest, looking through his deck a bit too attentively, but she proceeded to  _ destroy  _ the guy. It was Charlie who, when college application season came around, wiped Dean’s exhaustive arrest record (public intoxication, underage drinking, yelling at a stoplight, whatever, we all make mistakes, et cetera, et cetera) while Bobby cooperatively looked the other way, hired her as a goddamn  _ secretary _ (Charlie always said she was  _ between schools  _ and Dean never asked, and Bobby, god bless his trucker-cap wearing soul, never did either). 

(Charlie who called him that night,  _ Dean, I’m so sorry _ .) 

(It’s whatever, okay?) 

Anyway, she’s handing Dean a clipboard, so maybe get it together, here, Dean. 

“Hey, Dean,” Charlie says, very gently, so so much for avoiding her concern, God damn it. “Is everything okay?” 

Dean shrugs. “Getting there.” She hasn’t mentioned the fading bruises under his eyes. This is one of the reasons Dean loves Charlie. “It’s nothing to worry about, though. Oh,” he says, suddenly seeing both an out and an opportunity, “You should come over tonight. We’re doing Hanukkah for Jess. Bring Gilda! I’ll fifth wheel, it’ll be great.” 

“Gilda’s out of town,” Charlie says, giving Dean a sideways smirk. It’s been years and Dean has no fucking idea what Charlie’s girlfriend does for a living, just that it involves a lot of travel and a lot of money. He’s sort of afraid to ask. 

“Oh. In that case, third wheel meet fourth wheel?” 

“I’ll be over at seven,” Charlie says, and then the phone rings, so, crisis averted, basically. 

It’s almost enough to keep Dean’s stomach from dropping as he looks down at the incident report form. Almost. 

*

Dean leaves before Bobby has time to notice he’s there, before he can look at him with those sad eyes set in that grizzled face and say  _ there’s nothing we can do, son.  _ Because what  _ can _ they do? Alistair is a cartoon villain with paper motives whose kingdom rests on a dick pic and a mountain of wealth and privilege, and it’s as simple and immensely fucking fucked up as that. What will they arrest him for? An assault accusation that Alistair has already said he’ll turn onto Dean if it comes to that? Please. Dean filing the report in the first place is him proving to himself that he’s  _ trying _ , he  _ is _ , but he knows better than to expect anything of it.  

He’s shoving bags of Hanukkah decorations and a menorah and those little fucking bags of chocolate coins into the trunk of the Impala (sue him, he went a little overboard, maybe Sammy isn’t the only one excited about Hanukkah  _ okay _ [excited about watching Jess and Sam look at each other like they’re the best fucking thing in each other’s worlds, whatever, same difference]) when it all sort of hits, and he slumps against the body of the car, the cool metal a small comfort against his shame-hot skin. He slams the trunk shut and heaves himself into the driver’s seat. 

(He doesn’t notice Castiel, close enough to watch but far enough away to go unnoticed, because Castiel does not  _ want _ to be noticed.) 

(When Castiel watches Dean all but collapse, it takes everything in him not to go to him. He grits his teeth against the impulse and imagines wrapping his hands around Alistair’s throat.) 

(Perhaps not now, but soon.) 

*

When Jess comes, she brings the sun with her, pulls these huge smiles out of Sam like it’s nothing, and God, how can Dean object to that, you know? It aches, the way he and Sam grew up, but he looks at his fucking brother (his fucking kid) grinning at this beautiful girl like she personally hung the moon, and there’s only so heartsick he can be. 

“If you don’t kiss her,” Charlie pipes up from beside Dean on the couch by way of greeting, eyebrows lifting as the two of them hug in the entryway, “ _ I _ will.” 

“So if I don’t kiss him I get to kiss you? What a deal!” 

She kisses Sam, obviously, because Jess is full of shit. 

“God, look at them. I miss Gilda,” Charlie whispers in Dean’s direction, and he rolls his eyes, pretending something isn’t tugging in his own chest, watching them, something that he really doesn’t want to psychoanalyze, okay? It’s just that having all these people here makes who  _ isn’t _ here (who hasn’t been here in a few days now, or responded to his texts, or left any dishes in the sink, or done anything to show he actually lives here) really fucking noticeable. 

“Jesus, Dean,  _ you _ did this?” Jess says, jerking him out of his angst, and his lips quirk up at the corners as she gazes around the living room in wonder. “They make  _ Hanukkah garland?  _ I love it.” 

“Chag sameach, bitch?” Dean tries, and Jess positively  _ beams _ . 

“Chag sameach, jerk.” 

“That’s our thing!” Sam protests, and yeah, whatever, Sam, look at your stupid glowing face, you’re not fooling anyone. 

“ _ I’m _ Dean’s brother now,” Jess intones, and drags Sam over to the couch, the four of them in a heap, Charlie shooting Dean a  _ look _ as Jess’s hip presses into hers. “Ohmygod. Is that an honest-to-God dreidel? Did you just plug Hanukkah into Google images and grab everything that looked vaguely Jewish?” 

“Dreidel is a Hanukkah thing!” Dean protests.

“A  _ boring  _ one.” 

“I would not be opposed to dreidel,” Sam interjects. 

“Is there weed involved? I would like there to be weed involved,” Charlie says. 

“ _Advanced_ dreidel,” Sam replies.  
“Dreidel 2: this time, it’s personal.” Jess pokes Sam in the side and is on her feet again, because why stay put for thirty seconds when you could _not_ do that, and declares, “I have to cook. Don’t get drunk without me.” 

An exciting thing about Jess is that she went to culinary school for a year at a community college before deciding she wanted to go into law—two peas in a fucking pod, Jess and Sam. 

( _“_ I wish I hadn’t,” she told Dean once. “It’d be so much cooler to be, like, _hi, I’m Jess, and I rebelliously became a pastry chef!_ Law’s what my dad went into. I never wanted to follow in his footsteps. But...the chips fell where they may or whatever the fuck. And here I am.”) 

(“Helping people. Litigating things,” Dean had replied solemnly, waggling his eyebrows. “The family business.”) 

Anyway, Jess is the best cook out of all of them. “Do you need help?” Sam asks all earnestly, like he does every time she cooks for them, even though every time Jess replies with  _ stay the fuck out of my kitchen,  _ and she flicks him in the ear. 

“You can keep me company,” she says, surprising all of them, and then, defensively, “What? I missed you. Don’t make it weird,” and reaches up to grab his hand, pulls him into the kitchen after her. 

 Dean loves Jess. Jess is fucking hilarious. But he especially loves her for loving Sam. 

For a while, they make conversation, Jess and Sam shouting from the kitchen over the sound of the stove, the apartment steadily filling with the smell of potatoes frying, but they eventually break off, Charlie turning to him meaningfully, and Dean figures it was only a matter of time before this happened. 

“I saw your incident report,” she says quietly. 

Dean exhales. “Yeah, about that.” 

“Dean, you know you’re my ride or die, but if you want Bobby to be able to do anything, you’re going to have to work with him.” 

He bristles. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean, under  _ preferred pronouns,  _ you wrote  _ don’t talk about me. _ ”

“Will my dazzling wit derail the investigation?” 

Charlie doesn’t laugh, and Dean’s stomach does a lazy barrel roll. 

“You barely even explained what happened. You didn’t even give Bobby a last name.” 

“There’s nothing he could do anyway,” Dean says. 

“How do you know? You’re not even letting him try!” 

“Keep your voice down,” Dean mumbles, quiet, and Charlie’s face softens.

“We don’t have to talk about it now,” she says, and Dean loves her for it. 

So they eat latkes, which yeah, Dean does fucking enjoy, as it turns out, barely letting them cool and burning their tongues in the process. So they play  _ advanced dreidel,  _ which mostly means taking hits off a joint Charlie produced from God knows where anytime anyone takes a turn (and so what if Dean follows up every hit with a hit off his inhaler, it doesn’t matter tonight) until they’re laughing at everything and the room spins. So Jess lights the candles at sunset, reciting the Hebrew prayer, and Sam honest-to-God cries, kissing her on the top of her head, muttering  _ I fucking love Hanukkah, I fucking love you,  _ and Charlie and Dean trade amused glances, because high Sam is best Sam. So Dean calls Jo at some point,  _ I fucking love you Jo I miss you oh my God  _ and she laughs and says  _ you’re high but I love you too  _ and Dean smiles slow and stupid. So Dean texts Castiel, phone close to his face so no one else can see,  **why hav u beeen avoiding me, cas?,** nearly has a stroke when Castiel replies almost immediately:  **I’m sorry, Dean. I can’t explain right now. It’s not your fault. Are you alright?** So he throws his phone at the wall and cries a little into Sam’s shoulder, says he’s just having an emotional high. So Jess strokes his hair and shushes him gently, and Charlie slithers off the couch and all of a sudden they’re watching  _ Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,  _ because yeah, sue him, nothing cheers Dean up like watching the  _ USS Enterprise  _ crew save the whales. So they fall asleep there, Jess’s head on Sam’s lap, Dean’s head on Sam’s shoulder, Charlie tucked into his side, surrounded by chocolate coin wrappers ( _ gelt,  _ Sam told Dean seriously, and Jess kissed him on the cheek for his efforts), the ashtray upturned on the carpet. So maybe Dean really, really likes Hanukkah. 

(Castiel comes home, black blood dripping down his wrist, and takes in the scene, smiling fondly, sadly. Sees Dean’s phone on the floor near the wall, screen shattered, smile turning brittle on his face like a worm drying out on the sidewalk.) 

(Fights every instinct telling him to go to him. Thinks about that kiss.) 

( _ I’m sorry, Dean,  _ he thinks, and wishes it was enough.) 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! if you're still around, tysm! i've been having a hard time recently and am feeling very insecure about this fic - i rly didnt mean for it to be a slow burn, i swear! i feel like this chapter didn't move the story forward very much, but i wanted to flesh out samanddean a little more, as well as introduce jess & charlie. i'm not abandoning this fic i promise!! break is coming so i'm hoping to crank some stuff out B) comments are life!


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